CHINA BEACH - Softcover

Matlin, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0882680668 ISBN 13: 9780882680668

Publisher: Station Hill Press, 2010

Synopsis

These poems and prose texts confront the bewilderments and emergencies of ordinary life, for which we never seem to be prepared and which leave us in danger of becoming ghosts of our own exhaustion. A stark, enraged humor gives the work a brutal yet strangely delicate physical presence. "His work is remarkable for its imagery, often startling and violent, but always vividly real." — Helen Adams 

About this title

About the Author

David Matlin is a novelist, poet, and essayist. His collections of poetry and prose include the books China Beach, Dressed in Protective Fashion, and Fontana’s Mirror. How The Night is Divided, Matlin’s first novel was nominated for a National Book Circle Award. His latest book, Prisons, Inside the New America from Vernooykil Creek to Abu Ghraib is a new version of his original Vernooykil Creek: The Crisis of Prisons in America with an expanded focus on Abu Ghraib, the “Black Sites” and the spread of the American prison industry on a planet-wide basis. Matlin’s work appears in numerous journals, anthologies, and magazines, and he is a contributing editor of Golden Handcuffs Review. He is a native Calfornian and received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo where he studied with Robert Creeley, John Clarke, Angus Fletcher, and Diane Christian. He lives in San Diego.

Reviews

Perhaps the disjointedness and detachment of these poems reflect a deliberate attempt to mime the numbness of the Vietnam soldier--but, for the most part, this volume fails to engage the reader. Set mostly in late-1960s America and replete with references to figures, events and the popular culture of that time, these poems seem intended to confuse. Long sentences, with little punctuation and arbitrary line breaks, are unrewardingly strenuous; their difficulty is compounded by unexplained allusions, leaps in subject matter and abstract discourse ("the braided lines now of a teflon core's / depth of char closely proportional / to transient flaming's persistent ignition"). Many poems lack an identifiable narrator or stance; others include tirades so outraged as to be frivolous. Matlin ( Fontana's Mirror ) handles some subjects more convincingly: several poems about family members contain moments of tenderness; descriptions of the Southwest have a refreshing, almost scientific clarity; and the poet uses archetypal images hauntingly ("boats of the dead / wandering up and down the continent's central / joint"). But even these themes are incompletely developed; they do not compensate for the general obscurity here.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Station Hill Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0882680668
• ISBN 13: 9780882680668
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 103