Biography

DANIEL THOMAS MORAN DANIEL THOMAS MORAN Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, New York 2005-2007 Daniel Thomas Moran, former Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, New York, born in New York City on March 9, 1957, is the author of twelve volumes of poetry, the most recent of which, In the Kingdom of Autumn, was published by Salmon Poetry in County Clare, Ireland in 2020 and Balance was published in India by Cyberwit.net also in 2020. His previous collections were Here in the Afterlife (2017 Integral Contemporary Literature Press at The University of Bucharest in Romania). Translation by Lidia Vianu, A Shed for Wood (2014 Salmon Poetry), De La Hilo La Willow Pond (2009 Contemporary Literature Press and also by Translation Café at The University of Bucharest translated to Romanian by Iulia Gabriela Anchidin Miron), Nieve de Agosto y otros poemas (2014 Diaz Grey Editores) (translated by Mariela Dreyfus of New York University), Looking for the Uncertain Past, was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2006 at The University of Salzburg in 2006. Other collections include Dancing for Victoria (1991), Gone to Innisfree (1993), Sheltered by Islands (1995), In Praise of August (Canio’s Editions 1999), From HiLo to Willow Pond (Street Press 2002), The Light of City and Sea-An Anthology of Suffolk County Poetry (Street Press 2006 as Editor), The Book of Moran (Asinine Poetry 2007). He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Biological Sciences from Stony Brook University (1979) and a Doctorate in Dental Surgery from Howard University (1983). He has read widely at bookstores, libraries and universities throughout New York, New England and Long Island and has done readings in Ireland, Italy, Austria, and Great Britain as well as at The Library of Congress and The United Nations. Significant Readings: New York Public Library-96th Street, Jefferson Market, Mid-Manhattan, Columbia U., Nassau College, Dowling College, St. Joseph’s College, Adelphi U., L.I.U. Southampton, Barnes and Noble- Union Square, Chelsea, Waterstone’s Books, Dublin Ireland, Killmallock Arts Festival, Limerick and Ballina all in Ireland, The Walt Whitman Birthplace, University of Vienna, University of Salzburg, University of Graz, C.W.Post College, The Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center in Queens, The Parish Museum Southampton, NY , The Bowery Poetry Club, The University of Rome, Dowling College, Five Towns College, Oswego University, Brooklyn Historical Society, Molloy College, Empire State College, Cornelia Street Café, Housing Works Books, Suffolk County Community College, Stony Brook University, Poets House, St. Benet’s Church London, The Goethe Institut (Washington, D.C), The Library of Congress, The United Nations, Boston University Medical Campus, Old South Meeting House, Boston, Gibson’s Books, Titcomb’s Bookshop, Frost Place in Franconia, NH, Harvard College, McNally Jackson Books in NYC, Trinity Church-Camden/London, The Irish Writers Centre-Dublin, Salmon Literary Centre, Quay Books Limerick, O’Bheal Cork City, iBAM Chicago, The Fells, the Robert Frost House in Franconia, NH, and more than 100 other locations since 1987. His work has appeared in such prestigious journals as Confrontation, The Recorder, Nassau Review, Oxford, National Forum, Hawaii Pacific Review, Commonweal, Parnassus, Opium, Istanbul Literature Review, Sulfur River, Mobius, Pedestal, Rattapallax, LUNGFULL, Poetry Salzburg Review, Prairie Poetry, The New York Times, The Journal of The American Medical Association, Literary Matters (Oxford University Press), Medical Humanities Journal, Hektoen International, The Humanist, American Atheist, iManhattan, The Seventh Quarry, Exit 13, Columbia Journal, Contemporary Literature Review,The East River Review, FEKT (Kosovo), The Journal of Dental Humanities, Levure Litteraire (France), Mobius, New Contrast:South African Journal, Nomad’s Choir, Obalnet (Slovenia),Palehouse, Sfera Eonica (Romania), Street Magazine, Sulfur River Literary Quarterly, The Same, Three Mile Harbor, Universal Oneness Anthology (India), VIA:Voices in Italian Americana (Bordighera Press) Poetry tREnD Anthology (Germany), and The Norton Critical Anthology on Darwin. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize on ten occasions. He had a number of his essays published in The New York Times, Newsday, The Easthampton Star and The Shelter Island Reporter. He wrote the obituary of renowned New York poet Samuel Menashe for The Guardian in London in 2011. From 1997-2005 he served as Vice-President of The Walt Whitman Birthplace Association in West Hills, New York where he instituted The Long Island School of Poetry Reading Series and has been Literary Correspondent to Long Island Public Radio where he hosted Poet’s Corner and The Long Island Radio Magazine. He was Vice President of The Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. He was profiled on New York Public Television’s Setting the Stage (which was nominated for a New York Emmy Award) and on The Poet and The Poem from The Library of Congress hosted by Grace Cavalieri. He was profiled in the 2009 edition of Poet’s Market. He is a participating writer to The Password Project, an international collaboration between visual artists and writers based in Austria. In 2005 he was appointed Poet Laureate by The Legislature of Suffolk County, New York, the birthplace of Walt Whitman, and served until 2007. His work has also been translated into Romanian and Spanish, and has been published in Canada, France, Colombia, Austria, Germany, Turkey, Slovenia, Wales, England, Australia, New Zealand, Romania, Italy, South Africa, India, Kosovo, and China. He has been listed in Who’s Who in America (since 2000), The International Who’s Who, The Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers and The International Who’s Who in Poetry. He is a member of PEN American and has been ordained a Celebrant by The American Humanist Association. He edited of The Light of City and Sea, An Anthology of Suffolk County Poetry 2006 (Street Press). His collected papers are being archived by Kristen Nyitray at The Department of Special Collections of The Frank Melville Library at Stony Brook University where he also served on The Dean’s Council from 2005-2010. In 2006 he was inducted into The Massapequa High Schools Hall of Fame.. He was judge of the Massachusetts Poetry Out Loud Competition in 2012. He is a founding member of Irish American Writers & Artists. He presently serves as Chair of The Dean’s Advisory Board for the University Libraries at Stony Brook University and as Arts Editor for The Humanist magazine inn Washington, D.C. He was Poetry Editor of Humanist Network News. He is an ordained Humanist Celebrant and served on the Board of The Humanist Society from 2014-2016. He also serves on three committees in New Hampshire which are dedicated to matters of conservation. He is the Father of Lindsay Alison (b. 1984), Ashley Zurl (b.1987) and Gregory Riordan (b.1990). He and his wife Karen live in Webster, New Hampshire. In 2013, he retired from his position as Clinical Assistant Professor of General Dentistry at Boston University’s Goldman School of Dental Medicine. In 2011, he delivered the school’s Commencement Address and received the Outstanding Faculty Award from The American Student Dental Association. He also received the Outstanding Faculty Award from the graduating class of 2012. He retired from teaching in 2013. He is also a chair maker, making chairs using the methods and tools used in the 18th century. One of his chairs is featured on the cover of his new collection, In the Kingdom of Autumn.

Samples

On the Dying of Amy Winehouse Among us, there are those who will not make it. Those who will contend with mortality, Wrapping themselves around it, Unable to let go. We watch them as prey through a sight. Cheer them as the mob below, Looking up at the man on the ledge. We are unsure what to hope for. We stand by as they put the pain into their limbs and lungs. We take what we desire. They understand how want has no confines. But too soon the bed is emptied of lovers. And we are left with the despair that knows, What we do to one another, is still the lesser, than that Which we do to ourselves. 2011 Daniel Thomas Moran Fireflies For Karen There was the white house with the tiny rooms, Beside the blonde wheat which danced with a wind, Which came late each day to carry in the gloaming. On those warmed nights July spilt with stars, There were the fireflies that played against the flecked blackness and the whispered hissing of voices. And there was the road which led to places which could not be seen. Above my head, as I ran, Over the leaning wheat, A horizon too far to be considered. Now in the distance of years. Cradling a glass of wine to warm me. There is the river that runs the night. And the fireflies on new shoots of Primrose, Lupine and Butterfly Weed. Beneath these abiding white pines. My head against a chair that rocks me, I am thinking of wheat and roads. A house filled with ghosts and strangers. The dark alighting around me. My hand under a glass filled with light, clarified and sweetened with age. 2011 Daniel Thomas Moran Sonnet for the Moon on December 12th, 2008 Moon over this midnight Like a giant’s heart, Bids that darkness from the Unadorned trees depart. How generous is This peculiar thing, That brings a noon to this Long benumbed evening. Sure, such striking light So much rarer yet, Than all the lesser stars We may for now forget. Late wakened this night We will long recall, how We paid morning’s sun No mind at all. The only thing in your light, as yet unclear. What of this night, Dear Moon, draws you so near? 2008 Daniel Thomas Moran To Debbie After I Had Already Eaten The Octopusses for Debbie Gustin Last night, over a pizza, I told you how, last week I had eaten a marinated baby octopus or two in the Japanese restaurant. Actually I ate four of them, all tiny and tender and still, (except for the one which was a bit tough). I told you that I had first hesitated, seeing them there huddled together on the square china plate. But I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of my wife (who was unsure about the idea from the start), or the little Japanese girl who had served them up. I felt like a crow, or worse, some kind of viper, robbing them of their forever unfulfilled lives. I left one there, just to show that I wasn’t heartless, even in my hunger, capable of the truest mercies. But then you told me of the program that you had just watched, on The Remarkable Octopus, how they were so smart, possessed of true sentiments, tender creatures, and almost human you said. I suppose we could have also wept for the pizza. Instead I thought that, perhaps those babies might have one day survived to become the TERRIBLE GIANTS OF THE DEEP. Lunging up to grasp a ship of refugees, or even eco-tourists on holiday. Dragging them down screaming into a grave of briny blackness. So, now I prefer to be: That brave man who had saved four fine ships, and the lives of many scores of old women and babies, on the high savage seas fleeing places of hunger and tyrants. A great man with this one regret: One should not trifle with monsters. I should have eaten the last of those wicked little bastards, and asked for a second helping. 2007 Daniel Thomas Moran When Nothing Happens I have stared out through this window before. Many times. Who knows the sums of such things? I was there this morning, a fresh mug of coffee sending the aroma of waking up from the table beside me. Yesterday, the trees were the waving arms of children at a parade. The sunrise was a golden flood. In Winter, the finches were the ghosts of Spring. The frozen pond a tomb for the sky. The Christmas cactus was the ebon night above us on The Fourth of July, and the hill which lifts this house fell away from the porch like the falter toward eternity. But on this day, the glass is only glass. The rain is only the rain. This morning is but the last of last night. The cats are just cats. The leaves of the laurel look as they do, and I am only a man in an old robe, cradling a cooled cup, capped pen in his pocket, and likely to be late for work. Daniel Thomas Moran A Gold Case I have a gold watch. Bought in Ile de la Cite on my last Lune de Miel. It runs well, but twenty-three minutes fast every day. I look at it, but I never know, what time it might really be. It is always sometime just prior. Like me, my wife loves the watch. Just as she loved Paris. She often tells me that she loves me as well, except For my always being early, thinking I am right on time. 2007 Daniel Thomas Moran At The Louvre I’ve been to see The Mona Lisa. Traversed the angry Atlantique. Dealt with Frenchmen; their lunging taxis, their coffee dense and bitter, their sweet condescension. I’ve stood for an hour in a wind-driven rain. Descended into the great pyramid of I.M. Pei. Paid the fare in francs to wander that fortress Past the winged Victory, the armless Venus, Vermeer’s Astronomer. Five hundred depictions of the dying Jesus and the elegant portraits of many Frenchmen who would sadly lose their heads. I followed the signposts, heard my heels down the lengths of those long hallowed halls. Then, at once she was there. Her face looking back at me over a field of cameras held high above the crowd. the subtle terra incognita of her spattered with awe and battery light. And I took my turn, slithered and gaped and uttered excuse moi and then turned my back again, and wandered off to look for Olympia. 2002 Daniel Thomas Moran Saturday or Sunday Morning, Early This morning, I left our bed early. You know how, with the early sun and silence, my mind begins to spin like that mysterious machine at the carnival which makes cotton candy. I try to not disturb you, but I imagine you alone, wandering in some storied forest with only the lights of a big moon to suggest your steps. Wherever you are, as our cats circle the room stepping across clouds, I cannot be. Still, you always tell me that you know when I am gone. But I am never gone. That night which folded us together has more secrets to share with you, And I am awake, in the company of many bushels of thoughts; Conversations I will have, poems and letters needing to be written, and many things I placed on my nightstand just before I shut out the light and turned to cradle you in that rich velvet. This morning, I am in your chair, playing out all the many cards of my life. The air, the piano and our cats are all still and I am listening, as I do, for you to call out in your sleepy voice and let me know That you have returned. 2005 Daniel Thomas Moran

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