Morning Glory Moon

A Weaving of Free Verse and Forms

by Casey Robb

Casey Robb’s diverse collection of poetry encompasses both free verse and traditional forms, (such as sonnets, pantoums, and villanelles) to move the reader through moods that range from eerie and somber to humorous and light. Robb mines topics such as tornadoes, grief, danger, aging, ghosts, and war exploring the darker side of life, and then with poems that frolic with monkeys & mirth, fiddles & fireflies, astrophysics & trains, paintings & partings, and a spider dance, she eases the reader to a cozy landing, a winding down to sleep.

Enjoy a video of Casey reading from her new book:

Early Praise

Casey Robb is a master of using poetic repetition to move each poem full circle from beginning to end and tie it up in a neat bow. She uses images that are both haunting and startling. It’s impossible to know what to expect. Visit Casey’s world, and you’ll return home with a different vision of your everyday, ordinary life.

—NOLCHA FOX, author of Writing Between the Lines, Memory is that Raccoon, and My Pelvis Wants to Be Elvis

Casey Robb’s new collection is sub-titled A Weaving of Free Verse and Forms—apt, given her skill with both. Casey handles magical images as well as she does concrete ones—a true weaver of morning glory moons.

—KATHY KIETH, editor Medusa’s Kitchen

Casey Robb’s poetry collection Morning Glory Moon is a masterful work, which includes sonnets, villanelles, ekphrastic poems, pantoums, blank verse, free verse, terzanelles, rondels, and rondelets, among others. That alone makes this book a manual for developing poets. Although crafted according to rules for rhyme and meter, repetition, and formulas, the poems are evocative. The forms in these poems do not dominate the content. Robb’s poems express universal truth. The four parts of the book include haunting stories, myths, and memories that explore grief, humor, aging, loss, death, and other topics related to the human condition. To do so within formal poetic forms demonstrates impeccable skill.

—BARBARA HARRIS LEONHARD, editor of Feed the Holy; author of The Lost Book of Zeroth

Casey Robb’s Morning Glory Moon: A Weaving of Form and Free Verse is the breath of the spoken word, the life force engendered by a poet alone in a room with language. It is also a testament to the idea that power restrained is power released, and that form liberates the imagination. The sonnet, the villanelle, and other forms accent Robb’s distinctive voice and individual personality in settings on the rural plains of the United States, in Latin America, South America, and in the world of art. Her rhymes, similarities in sense as well as in sound, complement lucid, perceptive images. All together they showcase a poet of imagination and vision, and her concern for the terror, beauty, and wonder of the natural world. Her poems are questions, shapes of light and dark in the night sky, ruins down from the path that catch the eye, and beckon the traveler to descend and explore. The world is a wedding of harmony and discord, sense and sensuality, and self and other.

—PETE MLADINIC, author of The Whitestone Bridge and Maiden Rock

Morning Glory Moon: A Weaving of Free Verse and Forms blooms like its namesake flower that unfolds at night. Robb’s poems are radiant, rare, and full of wonder. Her collection is as much about form as it is about feeling. By weaving together Italian, Shakespearean, and Spenserian sonnets with villanelles, pantoums, and terzanelles, she weaves myths, wars, and histories into a seamless tapestry of poetry. Robb’s poetry opens slowly, revealing layers of craft, emotion, and intellect. Her poems draw from an astonishing range of allusions, from the mythic Minotaur and Greek king Agamemnon of Mycenae, to the visionary architect Maya Lin and her Vietnam Veterans Memorial. She moves effortlessly from the ancient ruins of Çatal Höyük to 1888’s ghost towns, from Cinderella’s fairy tale to the war-torn skies of Khe Sanh and Da Nang, and to the wistful journey of the Sierra Madre Train.

—MUNMUM (SAM) SAMAMTA, author of Yellow Chrysanthemums

What is your guilty pleasure? For me it’s a plate of meatloaf, mashed potatoes and macaroni & cheese. Simple but with a subtle complexity in how they come together and sit on the plate. The same can be said about Casey Robb’s poetry and how the words sit nestled on the pages and the subtle complexity in how each poem in Morning Glory Moon sits in my head. Warm, comforting with a relaxed familiarity. Don’t overthink it. Do you need anything more in well written poetry? The answer is no. And if you’re insulted in my comparing good poetry to meatloaf, then you’ve never had a really good piece of meatloaf or read really good poetry to understand what I mean.

—KEN TOMARO, author of Standing Lonely in the Alley and You’ve Got it all Wrong

In a world where the contents of almost every book of poems out there is ragged, formless and shapeless, and every poet (man or woman) is a wannabe Bukowski clone, Casey Robb and her poems are neither. Every poem is unique and finely crafted, and Casey Robb stands on her own, with a voice that’s simultaneously very familiar and refreshingly new.

—JOHN YAMRUS, author of Captain Beefheart Never Licked My Decals Off, Baby, and Don’t Shoot the Messenger; Just Give Him a Good Place to Hide

About the Author

Casey Robb is a former physical therapist and a retired civil engineer from Texas, living in Northern California near her two adopted daughters. Her early passion for poetry was rekindled in middle age in the California Federation of Chaparral Poets (CFCP). Casey’s poetry has been published in many journals and has won numerous awards, including a best-of-convention trophy and a runner-up trophy at CFCP conventions. Her poems encompass a diverse range of subjects, both light and dark. She also enjoys writing fiction. Her short stories have been published in various journals, and she is currently working on a novel.

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