Moss was born in New York City. He attended the University of Michigan, where he won a Hopwood Award. He is credited with discovering a number of major American poets, including Anne Sexton and Amy Clampitt. He was a closeted homosexual.

W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman co-wrote a famously concise clerihew in his honor:

TO THE POETRY EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER

:Is Robert LowellBetter than NoelCoward,Howard?

Poetry

• The Wound and the Weather (1946)
• The Toy Fair (1954)
• A Swimmer in the Air (1957)
• A Winter Come, A Summer Gone: Poems, 1946-1960 (1960)
• Finding Them Lost and Other Poems (1965)
• Second Nature (1968)
• Selected Poems (1971)
• Buried City: Poems (1975)

Plays

• The Folding Green (1958)
• The Oedipus Mah-Jongg Scandal (1968)
• The Palace at 4 A.M. (1972)

Other

• The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust (1963)
• Instant Lives & More (1972)