The Jane Poems

In an early poem in this collection, The Jane Poems, Ronald Moran recounts how, as a lovestruck young man hoping to catch his chosen girl’s eye, he once spent an afternoon “mowing the same / patch of lawn over and over”—shirtless, just in case she should happen by. This awkward “offering of my unrehearsed / goods in early summer” was the prelude to a successful marriage that endured for half a century.

Moran’s wife, Jane, passed away in 2009, and The Jane Poems captures, in a poetry that is sometimes wry, sometimes deeply poignant, their difficult final years together and Moran’s struggle to cope with her death. He addresses illness, memory, death, and mourning in ways both frank and moving.