From the prize-winning poet: “A stunning volume . . . A master of the understatement, Matthews is wryly philosophical and self-deprecating.” —Booklist When William Matthews died, the day after his fifty-fifth birthday, America lost one of its most important poets, one whose humor and wit were balanced by deep emotion, whose off-the-cuff inventiveness belied the acuity of his verse. Drawing from his eleven collections and including twenty-three previously unpublished poems, Search Party is the essential compilation of this beloved poet's work. Edited by his son, Sebastian Matthews, and William Matthews's friend and fellow poet Stanley Plumly (who also introduces the book), Search Party is an excellent introduction to the poet and his glistening riffs on twentieth-century topics from basketball to food to jazz.
Watercolor paintings of the landscape and people of the West interspersed with a narration by Annie Proulx of Matthews' life and work with insight into both the ranching life and the art-making life.
A collection from “one of the few contemporary poets who really knew how to make the vernacular sing” (Library Journal). In this collection of poems completed shortly before his death, William Matthews seems to be looking his last on all things lovely: music, food and wine, love. In the stunning central poem, “Dire Cure,” which forms a kind of spine to the book, he describes the remarkable implications of the “heroic measures” that saved the life and restored the health of his wife from “a children’s cancer (doesn’t that possessive break your heart?).” He evokes the death of his favorite jazz musician, Charles Mingus. He speaks of cats, dogs, pigs, sheep, of the past, of history, of joys proposed, but especially, with his characteristic relaxed wit, of language and its quiddities: “My love says I think too damn much and maybe she’s right.” After All is the final word from this winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, one of the most pensive and delicious of all our poets. “Range[s] 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. A lovely finale.” —Library Journal “His poems have an authentic lyricism, taut and inevitable in its music and movement.” —Charles Simic, author of The Lunatic: Poems
An excellent book, which carries one away with its vigor and invention, both in such poems as 'Straight Life' and in it breezy, pungent versions of Martial.' -Richard Wilbur
In the venerable tradition of Frederic Remington and N.C. Wyeth, Matthews has quickly established himself as a leading artist of the American West. His evocative watercolor images of contemporary working cowboys embody the timeless spirit of the Western frontier and offer a fresh portrayal of one of America's most beloved icons. Over 100 watercolor reproductions.
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