Moonlight Rose in Blue

Praise for David Cope

“I salute your compassionate realism.”
—Carl Rakosi

“Cope renders the particulars of each scene with a striking intensity. . . full of insight and feeling.”
—George Drury 

“D.C.’s intensive clear details always a pleasure . . . very solid clear human texts.”
—Robert Creeley

“Beyond have a marvelous eye, [Cope’s] mastery of phrasing at times seems to peel the skin from his subjects. The poems become transcendent when he begins to dwell on his favorite subject—the human gesture.”
—James Ruggia

“The news that stays news is the modus operandi . . . bracing, smart, luminous and tight by turn. I enjoy Cope’s stretch from familial to sublime, and his prosimetric poet’s generous heart.”
—Anne Waldman

“David Cope’s poetry reaches into true silence and from that place within himself derives its indelible sanity of gothic dreams, direct musicality, sustained multiple resonance, objectivist heart, vernacular ear. His work is a paradox of detached lyricism confronting the abysses of his soul.”
—Jim Cohn

“It is with passion, honesty, a commitment to history, and an investment be be understood not only by his contemporaries but by generations to come, that Cope effortlessly pulls the reader into his descriptive language on this journey through history.”
—Sun Hong

Re The Invisible Keys: New and Selected Poems:

“Think Langston Hughes. Think the Beats. Think David Cope. Cope's compelling collection of darkness and light draws readers inward and forward with its powerful imagery--making us see.”
—Deirdre Fagan

“These later poems are some of [David’s] most vulnerable, dramatic and stellar. At times, these poems seem, in sequence, to present a microstaged neuroproduction—Dantean, Shakespearean in scope—at once theatrical and literary, each poem reflecting a deep awareness that the pilgrim’s transformation over the course of the journey is the only destination.”
—Jim Cohn (17 November 2023)