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Selected Poems and Translations : 1969-1991
by Matthews, William
- Used
- Paperback
- first
- Condition
- See description
- ISBN 10
- 0395669936
- ISBN 13
- 9780395669938
- Seller
-
Stow, Ohio, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. Paperback. 1st edition, 1st printing. 200 pp. Fine condition (corners crisp, no creases, no markings to text; ink name on first page, short remainder stripe on bottom page edges at spine). A clean, fresh copy.
Synopsis
"The road is what the car drinks/traveling on its tongue of light/all the way home." With lines like these William Matthews has created a body of work that stands alone in American poetry. Witty, sophisticated, yet lucid, his poems bring the reader refreshing insights into the everyday world of sports, music, wine, psychology, homes, pets, love, children, and literature. In the course of a brilliant career Matthews has also translated poems from French, Latin, and Bulgarian. In this first selection culled from his complete body of work, readers who have never sampled Matthews's poetry, or who cannot find it in print, will be able to take the measure of one of our most versatile and original poets. Matthews characteristically watches "the lights come on/in the valley, like bright type/being set in another language." Illuminating and thoughtful, his poems speak the truth in a way that prompted Peter Stitt, one of our most respected critics, to write that "William Matthews may be the wisest poet of his generation." In writing about W.H. Auden, Matthews could be describing himself: "The language has used him/ well and passed him through./We get what he has collected." This book, which includes some previously uncollected poems and translations, also draws on nine previous volumes: Ruining the New Road, Sleek for the Long Flight, Sticks & Stones, Rising and Falling, Selected Translations from Jean Follain, Flood, A Happy Childhood (that astonishing collection of poems with titles from Freud), Foreseeable Futures, and Blues If You Want, as well as translations from Martial and contemporary Bulgarian poets. "Our true subject is loneliness," he writes. "We've been divorced 1.5 times/per heart." "But think/with your body: not to be dead is to be/sexual, vivid, tender and harsh, a riot/of mixed feelings, and able to choose."
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Details
- Bookseller
- Buckeye Bookshop Online
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 4256
- Title
- Selected Poems and Translations : 1969-1991
- Author
- Matthews, William
- Format/Binding
- Paperback
- Book Condition
- Used
- Quantity Available
- 1
- ISBN 10
- 0395669936
- ISBN 13
- 9780395669938
- Publisher
- Houghton Mifflin
- Place of Publication
- Boston, MA
- Date Published
- 1992
Terms of Sale
Buckeye Bookshop Online
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Buckeye Bookshop Online
Biblio member since 2009
Stow, Ohio
About Buckeye Bookshop Online
Buckeye Bookshop's owners retired on December 28, 2019, and closed the retail shop on Brittain Rd. in Akron, Ohio.We continue to sell books online via Biblio and a few other venues. We currently have about 4,600 books listed online.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Crisp
- A term often used to indicate a book's new-like condition. Indicates that the hinges are not loosened. A book described as crisp...
- Remainder
- Book(s) which are sold at a very deep discount to alleviate publisher overstock. Often, though not always, they have a remainder...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
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