After All

August 31, 1998
What sets Matthews apart from other pleasant, autobiographically inclined poets is that he doesn't emote by rote, but feels sharply and smartly, transforming his sometimes trite scenarios into plain, careful insights. In this last volume, prepared before his death last year at the age of 55, Matthews gathers the stuff of life--car alarms and collegiate days, hospital misery and divorce. His laconic humor is ever at the ready: At a job interview, the poet dodges questions by speaking "fluent Fog." In Scotland, he wonders about the "astonishing sheep with canoe-shaped ears," and is pleased to learn from a shepherd that they are particularly stupid. Elsewhere, he recalls bringing "back a tall bubbin for the nice lady," who turns out to be "Martha Mitchell (wife of John/ Mitchell, soon to be Nixon's attorney general)." He considers such meetings proof that we are "by being born, a hostage/ to history" and deadpans, "Yes, there's cure for youth, but it's fatal." The very best lines combine Matthews's affability with trenchant turns on himself or his beloveds: "I like divorce. I love to compose/ letters of resignation" or "I saw her fierce privacy,/ like a gnarled luxuriant tree all hung/ with disappointments." The all too human singularity of these poems only underlines Matthews irreplacability.

September 15, 1998
How sad to think that these are Matthews's last poems. Much honored for his numerous works (e.g., Time & Money won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1995), Matthews was one of the few contemporary poets who really knew how to make the vernacular sing: "I like divorce. I love to compose/ letters of resignation; now and then/ I send one and leave in a lemon-/ hued Huff or a Snit with a four on the floor." Perhaps it was his love of music, evident in his best poems and turning up here in works like "Mingus in Shadow" and even with the "three student violists" who board the bus in "Morningside Heights, July." (How many people would carefully distinguish those instruments from violins?) Matthews is occasionally autumnal here ("To absolve me of my loneliness.../... I brought/ my cat with me for two weeks in Vermont"), but these poems range 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. This may not meld entirely into Matthews's strongest poetic statement, but it can stand with his best.--Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal

September 1, 1998
Sadly, these are Matthews' last poems. And death does, indeed, strut through these aggressively compact compositions, each so perfectly crafted and unerringly aimed that they hit with the force of lightning or a breath-stealing kiss. Matthews ponders such silly things as the antics of a cat or the delectable absurdities of euphemisms with slyly serious intent, then faces rage and illness head-on. "Dire Cure" tracks the civil war between cancer and chemicals within the body of his resilient and finally triumphant wife, and the stunning "Mingus in Shadow" protests against the disease that invaded and destroyed the formidable musician Matthews often cited as his muse. Ornery and recalcitrant, Matthews is reluctant to be nice, or play poet in public, or pay overt tribute to beauty or love. No, he seems to say, it's better to confess to our less than noble thoughts and deeds, but only in language so exquisite that its brilliancy, rather than any intimations of human failings, is what is remembered. ((Reviewed September 1, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)