"Moffeit's predecessors are really Jack Micheline, Ray Bremser, and d. a. levy. These poets were all marginal Beat poets who had more interest in street poetry, drugs, crime, and going it alone than in the more public scene of Kerouac and Ginsberg. These three poets are really closer to what the Outlaw Poets are all about.
As an Outlaw Poet, Tony Moffeit is more interested in Billy the Kid rather than the Dalai Lama. What he is searching for in many of his books and chapbooks is the dark American underbelly, the shadowy place where all creative energy originates. His sense of Lorca's Duende is visible in his poetry and blues performances. When he performs
Luminous Animal
, the room begins to shake."
-Todd Moore
"I've known Tony Moffeit since the early 1980s in Denver. I was with Ed Ward; we were both wondering who this cat was dressed in shiny leather, banging on the bongos like some incantatory, skinny white shadow. He had his voice down and it was a good sound. While the rest of us were learning to emote cool, Tony was blowing, scatting, chanting, rhyming hot. I quickly got the Pentecostal
suggestion of his rhythms; this man could sing. He conjured Ray Charles, he conjured Mick Jagger ... but with poetry!"
-John Macker,
Something Past After
(Stubborn Mule Press)