Alumni Spotlight: Chloë Moore ’24 talks poetry, public service, and the arc of the moral universe

By Callisto Martinez ’26

This month, The Words reached out to English major Chloë Moore for an update on how things are going after graduation. Chloë, who served as a Senior Newsletter Editor for The Words during their time at Mac, generously told us all about their adventures back home in Ithaca, NY and in Missoula, MT, where they are currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry! We are so grateful to Chloë for their insights, stories, and photos, and we hope you enjoy the update.

What does life after Mac look like for you?

After graduating, I moved back home to Ithaca, NY to rest and hang out with my parents (which was more fun than I expected). Shortly after my return, I joined the re-election campaign of State Senator Lea Webb, my local representative, as the Tompkins County Field Organizer. After winning re-election by 14% (and helping flip our Congressional seat!), I was hired as a Constituent Services Liaison in the Ithaca office, where I worked with constituents on issues including utility affordability, assistance programs, and resource access. I also took meetings with lobbyists and helped maintain a database of constituent opinions on legislative issues. In August, I packed all the books and sweaters I own, plus snow tires, into the back of my car, and my dad and I spent a very long 3 days together heading west to Missoula, MT, where I’m now a candidate for an MFA in Poetry. My life is now, without a doubt, the best it has ever been. I wake up every day in a sunny little second-floor apartment with deer grazing outside, I drive down the gully to our beautiful campus, and I read, write, learn, and teach until I head home, fall asleep, and wake up to do it again. Through one of my classes, I get 6 hours a week of studio time in our letterpress, where I’m learning to set type, carving linoleum stamps, and making broadsides for poets like Jane Hirshfield and Ross Gay. In my poetry workshop, I’m writing work I’m genuinely proud of and revising alongside some of the most brilliant, kind people I’ve ever met. And as a teacher, I’m shepherding my WRIT 101 students through a range of assignments and continuing my holy war against ChatGPT (I am largely victorious). Basically, life is everything I’ve ever wanted. The government pays me to teach and write— how could I complain? My life is living proof of the best parts of strong democratic institutions, and it feels more important than ever to say that public higher education is good, that it works, that paying artists is beneficial for society at large, that students are basically smart and engaged and capable of doing their work without AI when teachers believe in them, that poetry matters, that it is still worth it to invest in ourselves as thinkers and artists and members of a democracy.

What books, poems, or other art forms have been inspiring you lately?

I’ve spent a lot of time with the words of Jane Hirshfield and Ross Gay because of my Book Arts class, and both have offered so much. Hirshfield’s poems prove how much you can do with just a few lines; her sparseness and economy of language perfectly blends efficiency and emotion. I typeset one of her poems, “Opening the Hands Between Here and Here,” which reads in its entirety: “On the dark road, only the weight of the rope. / Yet the horse is there.” Perfect. Ross Gay is a role model in earnestness and genuine love for people; getting to meet him, and watching him sign a broadside that I’d designed, was a highlight of the semester so far. I’ve also been watching movies regularly, for the first time in a long time, and have loved learning more about that medium. The incomparable beauty of movies like In the Mood for Love and Paris, Texas, the tense sparseness of Badlands, the unmatchable depth of character in The Master, the subtle physicality and real heart in Blue Moon and Rebuilding, the sensitivity, bravery, and wit in Sorry, Baby… I could go on and on. It’s been a really fun medium to engage with as I deepen my practice on the page. My Letterboxd is @chlorbus for interested readers.

What has the distance and time away from Mac taught you about life? 

Oh gosh. I am 23! What do I know?! I know that art and public service go hand in hand and that nothing worth doing can be done alone. I know that being earnest, trying and caring hard, is cool. I know that the affected aloofness that seems to dominate online, especially in intellectual spaces, and that seems to stereotypically categorize the “MFA type” is a worthless performance exercise and will not bring you closer to people or to truth. I know that getting 8 hours of sleep and eating your vegetables and going on walks is good for you (please do not tell my mother I said this), and that sometimes it’s better to call it a night and try again the next day. I know that progress is not linear, that you can cry in class and still have your peers and mentors respect you, that no poem is perfect on the first try, that being generous instead of competitive will take you far, that people are basically good, that hope is alive because we are, that, as a mentor of mine from hometown Democratic politics says, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends in the direction we push it.” Have I done enough to push it? I don’t know. Probably not. Or, not yet. But I have tried, every day, to be a little kinder, a little smarter, a little more useful, in the ways I know how. 

During your time at Mac, were there particular classes, internships, or extracurriculars that have been informative for your post-grad life? If so, how?

Before writing these answers, I was editing my resumé, and while I don’t believe it’s a complete picture of my full self, I did notice just how many things on it were tied to Macalester. I’m currently applying for an extra teaching fellowship, so I was listing my “relevant coursework,” which I’ll copy and past here: Living in the Anthropocene w/ Prof. Tange, Literature and Nature w/ Prof. Elkins, Introduction to Creative Writing w/ Prof. Törzs, Building Poetic Worlds w/ Prof. Masum-Javed, Ecopoetics w/ Prof. Prior , Poetry w/ Prof. Masum-Javed, Spinoza’s Eco-Society w/ Prof Kordela , Poetry Capstone w/ Prof. Prior, Literature Capstone w/ Prof. Dawes. Everyone should take at least one of those classes, and really all of them (I turned out great). Above all, Macalester really delivered on the promise of a liberal arts education, the value of which is explained well by the Patron Saint of Literature Bros, David Foster Wallace, in his 2005 commencement speech at Antioch College, “This Is Water.” I just finished Infinite Jest (genius, no fun at all), and “This Is Water” is a much more digestible and optimistic bit of DFW that everyone should watch.

Is there anything new on the horizon for you that you’d like to highlight?

It’s getting cold here, so everyone should expect an excellent rotation of sweaters and jackets (until it gets so cold that I switch to the giant down puffer every day). I’m also gearing up to send out new poems for submission in literary magazines, though I have been putting that off (fear of rejection, the mortal ordeal of being known, etc etc. It is good to try! It is good to care about your work and share it! That note is as much for me as it is for you). Other than that, I’m looking forward to my spring semester, and will be sure to keep The Words updated if anything new and exciting happens to me. Though, the thing I’m learning to appreciate here is that every day where I do some reading and some writing is a gift, and every line is a new and exciting thing. Go to grad school in poetry; it will make you really excited about everything. 

Are there any Mac traditions or places that you miss?

This is a softball question! Obviously I miss Old Main 2 the most, and am touched to hear that “my” chair continues to serve the space well. I do also miss the cross-breeze I got in my Bigelow 3 dorm during my sophomore year. I miss Bagel Mondays (worst part about Montana — the bagels. I am from New York. The situation is dire. Please send capers by overnight mail). I miss Sir Prints-A-Lot (our department printer here, while less finicky, has no googly eyes). I miss the hustle and bustle of the English Department, though I am finding its natural successor in my current one (where I have an office! Shared with two other grad students, but still awesome). I miss Macalester but I see it everywhere, and I see the lessons it taught me playing out in my current life. How strange and how perfect, to be from so many places. 

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Hmm. I have no more smart things to say, so here is an assortment of things that have made me happy lately. Melissa Clark’s salmon, mascarpone, and fennel puff pastry tart, available from the New York Times, which was well-received at a recent poetry potluck. Jenny George’s collection After Image, which is queer and sad and mythic and smart. The movie Good Will Hunting, which I saw for the first time. The now-fallen autumn leaves of the mountain west. Waking up with the sun thanks to Daylight Savings (do NOT ask me about it getting dark at 4pm. I don’t want to talk about it). The shelf on my kitchen wall where I keep my tea (chamomile, raspberry, elderflower green, and darjeeling). The drip coffee at the diner by campus that costs $3 and makes my head feel like a big ringing gong for 5 hours after I drink it. The pairs of male deer raising their children in my yard (I believe the moms are off in a lesbian deer commune elsewhere, and I am thinking about running away to join them). The little seminar room with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves where my poetry workshop meets. The lead poisoning I get in the letterpress studio, which can be cured with Diet Coke. The northern lights, visible once from my porch. The wind, especially when I’m driving downhill. The new Geese album. The promise of more Josh O’Connor movies coming soon to theaters near you. The raw sweetness of being alive in the world. The filling of notebooks. The fact that someone will read this list :).