William Matthews, known for his personal, abstract poetry, will be reading from his latest book, "Time and Money," today as part of the University Visiting Writers Series.
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William Matthews
Rackham Amphitheater |
Though perhaps not well-known to students, Matthews is definitely an honored figure in the poetry world. He has taught at universities and writers' conferences across America, and is currently a professor of English at the City College of the City University of New York. He has served on the board of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Poetry Society of America, and is a winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation Residency in Italy. He is also a two-time winner of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
"Time and Money" is the product of five years of work. Matthews speaks of the two themes in his writing, stating that "time wastes us, and time saves and buys us / that time spends us, and time marks and kills us," and that money is "not an abstraction / it's math with consequences." These are the two universal obsessions of the human race, and Matthews attempts to capture the true emotions of these two presences in our lives.
The first poem in Matthews' work, "Grief," introduces the book on a powerful note with the lines "But none of us slows down for scorn / there's someone's misery in all we earn ... And I have told you this to make you grieve."
The work maintains the same power throughout, as Matthews explores the lives of a wide variety of characters. He writes of a scavenging bear, of the cheap seats in the Cincinnati Gardens and of a failed marriage; he approaches them all with the same sincere, honest point of view. His work is revealing and insightful as he ponders memory and life.
Kevin Walker of the Detroit Free Press refers to William Matthews as "one of this country's most fluent and satisfying poets." Matthews' writing often appears to come from a slightly dejected perspective, yet is extremely witty and compassionately sympathetic to the daily frustrations of the world. As he says, "You must release as much of this hoard / as you can, little by little, in perfect time / as the work of the body becomes a body of work."