Foreseeable Futures - Softcover

Matthews, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 039543100X ISBN 13: 9780395431009

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1987

About this title

From Library Journal

Matthews reflects on music, travel, poetry, and "what might have been," observing the "minuscule things" that render life endurable: "a speck of imperfection/ that could contain, like a microchip, an epic/ treatise on beauty," a recovery room where all "the amber night I seeped into a plastic pouch," bison's "fur peeling in strips like old/ wallpaper," the "yolk-yellow eyes" of crows. The poet wisely approaches his "days beyond recall" with a hard-earned self-knowledge ("If you're afraid of loneliness,/ don't marry") and "exact discriminations." Yet he tempers his stoicism with wry, well-written toasts to fleeting perceptions of joy that adhere "to your fingers like grime, like matter's/ fingerprints, like manual labor,/ like an entire life's work." Frank Allen, Assoc. Dean, Continuing Education, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

The Accompanist
Aesthetic Distance
April In The Berkshires
Attention, Shoppers
Black Box
Blue Notes
By Heart
Cabbage
Caddie's Day, The Country Club, A Small Town In Ohio
City Planning
Construction
Days Beyond Recall
Dog Life
Fellow Oddballs
Free Advice
Herd Of Buffalo Crossing The Missouri River On Ice
Hope
Leipzig, 1894
Liver Cancer
Lucky And Unlucky
Mail Order Catalogs
Men In Dark Suits
Minuscule Things
Orthopedic Surgery Ward
Photo Of The Author With A Favorite Pig
Puberty
Recovery Room
Scenic View
Schoolboys With Dog, Winter
Search For The Perfect Pasta
Self-knowledge
Three Vacations
Toasts To The Rented House In Polgeto
Torch Song
Vasectomy
Writer-in-residence
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 039543100X
• ISBN 13: 9780395431009
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 50