John C. Morrison schreef gedicht over Spinoza en de Morgenster
John C. Morrison behaalde zijn Master of Fine Arts aan de Universiteit van Alabama en verkreeg in 2004 het C. Hamilton Bailey Poetry Fellowship from Literary Arts, Portland, Oregon. Zijn gedichten verschenen in talrijke (ons hier uiteraard onbekende) bladen zoals Seattle Review, NaturalBridge, Cimarron Review, Southern Poetry Review, Good Foot, Poet Lore, Cimarron Review, Caffeine Destiny e.a. Hij geeft leiding aan de schrijversopleiding in het Literary Arts-programma in Oregon alsmede poëzie-les aan de Washington State University in Vancouver. 
Zijn eerste dichtbundel, Heaven of the Moment kwam uit in 2007. Hij won ermee de Rhea & Seymour Gorsline Poetry Competition. Zoals de title van de bundel al aangeeft is hij bezig met het koppelen van het tijdloze aan het tijdelijke.
De dichterDavid Biespiel en samensteller van Poetry Northwest, schreef over Heaven of the Moment: “Like William Blake, who could "see a world in a grain of sand, /And heaven in a wild flower," John C. Morrison's Heaven of the Moment can move from pensiveness to exhilaration in the flash of a phrase. Morrison is a poetic naturalist: He ponders the silent correspondences between the natural world and the self. He shows us how to adore the brimming promise of a lived life. Whether he's writing about early love or lousy summer jobs, about solitary games or familial communion, his poems overflow with generosity and gratefulness.”
In die bundel paste dus ook een Spinoza-gedicht:
Spinoza and the Morning
The surgeon knotted sutures one steptoo slow to seal the net of vessels
oozing around his heart. Mother
rocked, framed by a window
shining on the penultimate hour.
Stunned, stuck like the late night
for sign of morning. Young, at school
I’d write for philosophy and push up
from the kitchen chair to step outside,
breathe, and see the strange stars
spun to us from the other hemisphere
the lens grinder who taught relentless trust.
By morning when I packed my papers
in my bag and started toward campus,
I was drunk on exhaustion and his axiom
that we are God thinking. So let God learn regret.
and I scrubbed floors, toilets, grime inside
light fixtures so close to sunrise, he insisted
we have the light find us facing west
and the great Sacramento Valley.
The streets were empty as we drove, reckless,
through the dim. We outlived our folly.
Spinoza wouldn’t survive the glass dust
that lacerated his lungs. Dad,
bloated by another four liters of saline,
another twenty pounds of pressure to give his heart
as dust in the room, struggled to remember
how day begins. Those years before
out of the car and up the rocky hill’s dirt path,
my friend and I turned to see
already it was bright morning across the river
in the shadow of the Sierra
watching the wall of light careen our way,
emblazing pools of distant rice fields
and the deep green of almond orchards.
Faster than thought, light swept toward us,
claiming creek and stones, onto us
and over us, a wind from heaven to warm
our backs, lay our shadows in the grass.
Informatie van hier en hier en hier het gedicht van hier waar nog vier andere gedichten van hem te vinden zijn.
John Morrison leest op 13 mei 2009 in de Douglas County Headquarters Library in Roseburg "Notes Between Swing and Graveyard" uit zijn bundel HEAVEN OF THE MOMENT
