Poetry. SUPERFECTA examines our relation to time and memory with surprising energy and consistent empathy. The tension between systems and chance connect the collections' poems, balanced as they are between the abstractions of symbol and the immediacy of language. For Matthews, there is a thin line dividing the body's physicality and the wonder of the mind, where "The cartography of a rat is the same for all species/ in that it is always a map of the unknown." Matthews writes about our desire to identify mythos in everyday experience, and celebrates when it is discovered amid our anxious and uncertain place in history.

Superfecta

Literature & Fiction

Matthews, Clay

Poetry

Ghost Road Press

Pretty, Rooster features original comics from Shannon Wheeler (Too Much Coffee Man) and Micah Farritor (White Picket Fences &amp; Night Trippers), with other visual stimulations by Max Xiantu. Jason Schneiderman, author of Striking Surface, writes: You don't read these poems as much as you tumble through them. The pleasures of sound and sense are so perfectly calibrated that each of these sonnets wants to be read at least twice. The sonnet was invented as a vehicle for self-examination, and Matthews takes that literally, driving each one like it had a manual transmission. His discoveries are simultaneously comforting and unsettling, love always inflecting life, and life always inflectiing love.

Pretty, Rooster

Cooper Dillon Books

From Shannon Tharp: "In Shore, the world begins with 'The things that happen//before the thing/ that is going to happen.' This world's attendant language then moves outward, toward everything and somewhere, much as water and memory do. At the height of its singing, the poem asks, 'Have you grieved, dear Reader?' Within the answer to this question is the sound of water running inside a three, life returning to life, the bottle and the snuff tin, echoes of Emily Dickinson and Memphis Minnie--as though an Alan Lomax field recording has made its way to the page. In this graceful work, Clay Matthews thinks through and sounds out the stories that need telling."
From Steve Davenport: "Listen, the voice says. Once upon a time, there was a story and it was ours and it was made of many voices and it was true and it was never true and it was Clay Matthews' to tell, to sing, to turn into American Long Poem of fish guts and menstrual blood, of motor oil and rising waters, of beautiful umbrella. Where do we come from and where do we go? Better to ask how. Better to listen up and let Clay Matthews' gorgeous, terrible flood song take you back and take you away."

Shore

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Matthews, Clay. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Matthews, Clay

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Matthews, Clay. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Superfecta

Pretty, Rooster

Shore