Background
William Procter Matthews III was born on November 11, 1942, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. He was the son of William P. Matthews and Mary Elizabeth (Sather) Matthews.
245 North Undermountain Road, Sheffield, Berkshire, Massachusetts 01257-9672 United States
Berkshire School
New Haven, CT 06520, United States
Yale University
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States
University of North Carolina
Seattle, Washington, United States
University of Washington
160 Convent Ave, New York, NY 10031, United States
City College of New York
National Endowment for the Arts (logotype)
Associated Writing Programs (logotype)
National Book Critics Circle Award
Guggenheim Fellowship
(When William Matthews died, the day after his fifty-fifth...)
When William Matthews died, the day after his fifty-fifth birthday, America lost one of its most important poets, one whose humor and wit were balanced by deep emotion, whose off-the-cuff inventiveness belied the acuity of his verse. Drawing from his eleven collections and including twenty-three previously unpublished poems, Search Party is the essential compilation of this beloved poet's work. Edited by his son, Sebastian Matthews, and William Matthews's friend and fellow poet Stanley Plumly (who also introduces the book), Search Party is an excellent introduction to the poet and his glistening riffs on twentieth-century topics from basketball to food to jazz. When William Matthews died, the day after his fifty-fifth birthday, America lost one of its most important poets, one whose humor and wit were balanced by deep emotion, whose off-the-cuff inventiveness belied the acuity of his verse. Drawing from his eleven collections and including twenty-three previously unpublished poems, Search Party is the essential compilation of this beloved poet's work. Edited by his son, Sebastian Matthews, and William Matthews's friend and fellow poet Stanley Plumly (who also introduces the book), Search Party is an excellent introduction to the poet and his glistening riffs on twentieth-century topics from basketball to food to jazz.
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("The road is what the car drinks/traveling on its tongue ...)
"The road is what the car drinks/traveling on its tongue of light/all the way home." With lines like these William Matthews has created a body of work that stands alone in American poetry. Witty, sophisticated, yet lucid, his poems bring the reader refreshing insights into the everyday world of sports, music, wine, psychology, homes, pets, love, children, and literature. In the course of a brilliant career Matthews has also translated poems from French, Latin, and Bulgarian. In this first selection culled from his complete body of work, readers who have never sampled Matthews's poetry, or who cannot find it in print, will be able to take the measure of one of our most versatile and original poets. Matthews characteristically watches "the lights come on/in the valley, like bright type/being set in another language." Illuminating and thoughtful, his poems speak the truth in a way that prompted Peter Stitt, one of our most respected critics, to write that "William Matthews may be the wisest poet of his generation." In writing about W.H. Auden, Matthews could be describing himself: "The language has used him/ well and passed him through./We get what he has collected." This book, which includes some previously uncollected poems and translations, also draws on nine previous volumes: Ruining the New Road, Sleek for the Long Flight, Sticks & Stones, Rising and Falling, Selected Translations from Jean Follain, Flood, A Happy Childhood (that astonishing collection of poems with titles from Freud), Foreseeable Futures, and Blues If You Want, as well as translations from Martial and contemporary Bulgarian poets. "Our true subject is loneliness," he writes. "We've been divorced 1.5 times/per heart." "But think/with your body: not to be dead is to be/sexual, vivid, tender and harsh, a riot/of mixed feelings, and able to choose." "The road is what the car drinks/traveling on its tongue of light/all the way home." With lines like these William Matthews has created a body of work that stands alone in American poetry. Witty, sophisticated, yet lucid, his poems bring the reader refreshing insights into the everyday world of sports, music, wine, psychology, homes, pets, love, children, and literature. In the course of a brilliant career Matthews has also translated poems from French, Latin, and Bulgarian. In this first selection culled from his complete body of work, readers who have never sampled Matthews's poetry, or who cannot find it in print, will be able to take the measure of one of our most versatile and original poets. Matthews characteristically watches "the lights come on/in the valley, like bright type/being set in another language." Illuminating and thoughtful, his poems speak the truth in a way that prompted Peter Stitt, one of our most respected critics, to write that "William Matthews may be the wisest poet of his generation." In writing about W.H. Auden, Matthews could be describing himself: "The language has used him/ well and passed him through./We get what he has collected." This book, which includes some previously uncollected poems and translations, also draws on nine previous volumes: Ruining the New Road, Sleek for the Long Flight, Sticks & Stones, Rising and Falling, Selected Translations from Jean Follain, Flood, A Happy Childhood (that astonishing collection of poems with titles from Freud), Foreseeable Futures, and Blues If You Want, as well as translations from Martial and contemporary Bulgarian poets. "Our true subject is loneliness," he writes. "We've been divorced 1.5 times/per heart." "But think/with your body: not to be dead is to be/sexual, vivid, tender and harsh, a riot/of mixed feelings, and able to choose."
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0395669936/?tag=2022091-20
(A collection from “one of the few contemporary poets who ...)
A collection from “one of the few contemporary poets who really knew how to make the vernacular sing” (Library Journal). In this collection of poems completed shortly before his death, William Matthews seems to be looking his last on all things lovely: music, food and wine, love. In the stunning central poem, “Dire Cure,” which forms a kind of spine to the book, he describes the remarkable implications of the “heroic measures” that saved the life and restored the health of his wife from “a children’s cancer (doesn’t that possessive break your heart?).” He evokes the death of his favorite jazz musician, Charles Mingus. He speaks of cats, dogs, pigs, sheep, of the past, of history, of joys proposed, but especially, with his characteristic relaxed wit, of language and its quiddities: “My love says I think too damn much and maybe she’s right.” After All is the last word from this winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Ruth Lilly Award, one of the most pensive and delicious of all our poets. “Range[s] widely and brightly from Prague in 1419 to a Caribbean island in 1967 to Martha Mitchell, Finn sheep, and a poetry reading at West Point. A lovely finale.” —Library Journal “His poems have an authentic lyricism, taut and inevitable in its music and movement.” —Charles Simic A collection from “one of the few contemporary poets who really knew how to make the vernacular sing” (Library Journal). In this collection of poems completed shortly before his death, William Matthews seems to be looking his last on all things lovely: music, food and wine, love. In the stunning central poem, “Dire Cure,” which forms a kind of spine to the book, he describes the remarkable implications of the “heroic measures” that saved the life and restored the health of his wife from “a children’s cancer (doesn’t that possessive break your heart?).” He evokes the death of his favorite jazz musician, Charles Mingus. He speaks of cats, dogs, pigs, sheep, of the past, of history, of joys proposed, but especially, with his characteristic relaxed wit, of language and its quiddities: “My love says I think too damn much and maybe she’s right.” After All is the last word from this winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Ruth Lilly Award, one of the most pensive and delicious of all our poets. “Range[s] widely and brightly from Prague in 1419 to a Caribbean island in 1967 to Martha Mitchell, Finn sheep, and a poetry reading at West Point. A lovely finale.” —Library Journal “His poems have an authentic lyricism, taut and inevitable in its music and movement.” —Charles Simic
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(In his tenth book of poems, his first since Selected Poem...)
In his tenth book of poems, his first since Selected Poems and Translations 1969 to 1991, William Matthews turns in a fresh direction. In Time & Money, this worldly and ironical poet moves toward an accommodation with life through a maze of losses and loves - music, wine, women, travel, sports, and country pleasures. He enters time as though it were liquid: "Thus water licks its steady way through stone." He writes of musicians who keep time faithfully: "They have to hit the note / and the emotion, both, with the one poor / arrow of the voice." And he approaches the realities of money: "Money's not an abstraction; it's math / with consequences, and if it's a kind / of poetry, it's another inexact way, / like time, to measure some sorrow we can't / name." This strong book contains the work of five years by one of the most admired poet-judges, poet-teachers, and poet-participators in this country. Slightly dejected, witty, cynical, yet tolerant, even affectionate, Matthews chooses to tel
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(In the Poetry Blues, the late William Matthews holds fort...)
In the Poetry Blues, the late William Matthews holds forth on a medley of topics ranging from jazz to nude photography, Byron to Elizabeth Bishop, opera to Emerson. Throughout, Matthews writes about his love of music, language, poetry, and art while illuminating the subtle and important ways in which the things about which he feels passionately help to define and shape him. The book begins with a candid autobiographical essay, followed by an interview on the influence of jazz music on the poet's early work. Further into the collection, Matthews delves into the nature of the epigram and the work of jazz great Charles Mingus. Along the way, this revered poet offers insight into the work of this contemporaries, including W. S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, Hayden Carruth, and Richard Hugo. the book is as much autobiography and cultural criticism as it is literary nonfiction. It will be of interest to writers and teachers of writing, as well as to lovers of literature, language and music. Sebastian Matthews teaches writing at Warren Wilson College. Stanley Plumly is Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland. In the Poetry Blues, the late William Matthews holds forth on a medley of topics ranging from jazz to nude photography, Byron to Elizabeth Bishop, opera to Emerson. Throughout, Matthews writes about his love of music, language, poetry, and art while illuminating the subtle and important ways in which the things about which he feels passionately help to define and shape him. The book begins with a candid autobiographical essay, followed by an interview on the influence of jazz music on the poet's early work. Further into the collection, Matthews delves into the nature of the epigram and the work of jazz great Charles Mingus. Along the way, this revered poet offers insight into the work of this contemporaries, including W. S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, Hayden Carruth, and Richard Hugo. the book is as much autobiography and cultural criticism as it is literary nonfiction. It will be of interest to writers and teachers of writing, as well as to lovers of literature, language and music. Sebastian Matthews teaches writing at Warren Wilson College. Stanley Plumly is Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0472097733/?tag=2022091-20
(These essays reveal the poet's fascination with the relat...)
These essays reveal the poet's fascination with the relationship between language and emotional life These essays reveal the poet's fascination with the relationship between language and emotional life
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William Procter Matthews III was born on November 11, 1942, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. He was the son of William P. Matthews and Mary Elizabeth (Sather) Matthews.
Matthews attended Berkshire School. He then received his bachelor's degree from the Yale University and his master's degree from the University of North Carolina.
Early in his career, Matthews taught at schools such as Wells College, Cornell University, and the University of Colorado. He also served as writer-in-residence at Emerson College and taught at the University of Iowa and the University of Houston. In 1978 Matthews joined the faculty at the University of Washington as a professor of English. He became writer-in-residence at New York’s City College in 1985.
In addition to his teaching, Matthews served as co-director of Lillabulero Press and as co-editor of the journal Lillabulero beginning in 1966. He began serving as advisory editor for L’Epervier Press in 1976, as a member of the literature panel for the National Endowment for the Arts in 1976, and as a board member for Associated Writing Programs in 1977.
Among his collections of poetry are Broken Syllables, Ruining the New Road: Poems, The Cloud, The Moon, Flood, Foreseeable Futures, and Blues If You Want. Matthews also worked with Mary Feeney to translate Jean Follain’s Removed from Time.
(When William Matthews died, the day after his fifty-fifth...)
(These essays reveal the poet's fascination with the relat...)
(In the Poetry Blues, the late William Matthews holds fort...)
(In his tenth book of poems, his first since Selected Poem...)
(A collection from “one of the few contemporary poets who ...)
(Poems deal with writers, lawyers, memories, surgery, home...)
("The road is what the car drinks/traveling on its tongue ...)
Matthews was a member of the American Poetry Society.
Matthews married Marie Murray Harris on May 4, 1963. They divorced 10 years later. That marriage produced 2 children - William and Sebastian.