Night Offices

If you've ever suffered from insomnia or composed nocturnes of any kind during the night hours, Diane Marquart Moore's Night Offices, her nineteenth book of poetry, will "speak to your condition." Moore explores the uses and the cures for insomnia, famous characters who have suffered from this malady; e.g., W. C. Fields, Groucho Marx, and Thomas Edison. With characteristic wit and irony, she records the sleeplessness of various family members and friends, including her own propensity to recite the "night offices," writing that "...in four vigils of the night you wake/with desolation for a pillow./Phantom crucifixions hover-/monsters that pull/your soul from sleep,/peer over the edge/of a blade on a ceiling fan..." She confesses that no matter where she closes her eyes "a lightship lowers its anchor in the room."