Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    After All: Last Poems
    After All: Last Poems
    After All: Last Poems
    Ebook61 pages47 minutes

    After All: Last Poems

    By William Matthews

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    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
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateAug 23, 2012
    ISBN9780544101685
    After All: Last Poems
    Author

    William Matthews

    Enter the Author Bio(s) here.

    Read more from William Matthews

    Related to After All

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      I have an endless appetite for starfruit,for biting my teeth into the universe and spitting outthe space junk, for licking the rings of my favorite planetsand never slicing my tongue. There’s a story I shareabout my birth where angels circle my dead

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Bone-tough Throat

      Nov 1, 2021

      Books God of Nothingness by Mark Wunderlich Graywolf, 96 pages, 2021 Paperback, $16.00 My father fell from the boat.His balance had been poor for some time.He had gone out in the boat with his doghunting ducks in a marsh near Trempealeau, Wisconsin.N

      11 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Jennifer Barber

      Jun 8, 2021

      At first puzzlement, then joy. My baby in the making—surely my last—would, like a ferry heading for a wharf,know what to do along the way. The multiplying cells, the chemistryof contentment spreading through my blood: I was as ready for her birthas I

      1 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      He kept me through childhood.There was a reasonhe kept me from sin like a biscuitwarming in the oven.It’s okay I tell the rain to keep him a theorybut bring him downonce in a while.It’s okay to be honest or selfishbut find the spot where you sinka li

      2 min read

    • Article

      Six Sonnets

      Jan 1, 2021

      Goldenrod, I could say, you know, everybody wants somethingfrom me, but, well, everybody wants something and nobody wantsnothing from me, goldenrod, towhead, beast. Goldenrod, you packthe meadows like gold-plated sardines. I have heart palpitationsbu

      3 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      I spent all my avocado moneyby the light of Saint Martin de PorresI often think about bank robberyWhat wig I would wear, what fun it would beto harm no one and dump a million dollarsover the hills that belong to everyonefrom an airplane that I teach

      1 min read

    • Article

      Diaspora Sonnets

      Sep 1, 2022

      The old men drink their spritzers and gossipunder awnings. Red hued and blustery, like two roosters on the side of a road.Skyward they crane their necks and laugh, sometimes they wonder about kings and future kingsand how the muscles peer from their

      2 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      (Residue, cellophane, liquid amber, pearl resin on cardboard) Platinum blonde, with whiteboxes of Russianchocolates. Silver liquid glitter,lemon candle, crimsonleather 1970 Mercedessedan interior. Gum drops, fox fur, creamblouse with gold specksand t

      2 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      That the semi-circular canal is part of my ear,not a style of Venetian waterway arch,I learned mid-air on a Huffy.That bicycles left long out in the rain split.That prepositions are tricky.That I was made part industrious,part lazy-assed. That descri

      3 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: September 2019

      Sep 5, 2019

      Eight new and notable collections you want on your nightstand this month, including work by a lost Catalan master and the latest from our new poet laureate. The post Must-Read Poetry: September 2019 appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Think What a Poem Might Do: A Conversation with Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder

      Aug 17, 2017

      What, if anything, do you think poetry can do for us in these difficult times? The post Think What a Poem Might Do: A Conversation with Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: November 2020

      Nov 5, 2020

      Stop obsessively refreshing the New York Times's elections page, and check out these new books of poetry by Alice Quinn, Margaret Atwood, Yi Lei, Karina Borowicz, Valzhyna Mort, and Paul Celan. The post Must-Read Poetry: November 2020 appeared first

      6 min read

    • Article

      Seven Poems

      Sep 1, 2021

      The dancersIn a terribly brightLight blue gauzeRetained the mystery Skating on a lakeBlue and iceAn illusionary timeWhere poetry feels inevitable The terrific clownWho lies insideEvery blue dressDoes he see me Always a starAlways a rootHorrible auras

      2 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      followed—in front, as horses—into daisy& silver dancing, knowing the jaw who unkeysin the danced earth to drink me down to haints,& will go again. was willed. distrusted happiness, addicted to it.a god needs of a god. here, i don’t want to reachfor g

      3 min read

    • Article

      Flowers, Poems, Flower Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      A woman I’ve never met sends me tulips from two states over.There are things women know to do. They sit on my desk next to the window. I love flowersbecause they’re ordinary on one side of the glass and a gift on the other. I keep them aliveto rememb

      1 min read

    • Article

      What Living In A House Is Like

      May 1, 2022

      Standing in each stanza—no, I’m sorry—room. Standing in each room waslike standing in a tester stroke of wall paint. All these blobs of colors in rows and columns, the size of thumbs.Together—a portrait of potential. But blues leaped to yellow leaped

      1 min read

    • Article

      Fifteen Poets on Revision

      Feb 27, 2018

      After 17 drafts over two weeks, Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art” was completed on November 4, 1975. The poem began as notes, and evolved into a villanelle. She changed the title. She deleted words. She reached for possible rhymes. Brett Candlish Mil

      4 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      The painting is of a door, its wood so warpedwith moisture it cannot close. It stays ajar leaving a sliver of light—enough to suggestsomething sweet and almost unreachable behind the door—and you sit in yourroom working on the bills or those comforti

      4 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      Early such darkness, these oncoming nights& sure, I’m dull & even slow to concedehow mornings make equal, swerving measuresthere between those foremost shadowsalong the fence, amid the chickens & nerve,sheep & their indifference to any pair of foolsh

      3 min read

    • Article

      Poet Mary Oliver Dies at 83

      Jan 17, 2019

      Poet Mary Oliver Dies at 83
      2 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      May 1, 2023

      At the end of the world, I sat in the dark waiting for you,but you didn’t come. You didn’t save me. At the end we are always alone, candles slowlyburning out, losing the flame for lack of oxygen. You didn’t tell me it would be like this. All of itcam

      2 min read

    • Article

      Where To Start With Louise Glück, Winner Of The 2020 Nobel Prize In Literature

      Oct 14, 2020

      The Swedish Academy has awarded this year's Nobel Prize in literature to Louise Gluck, a former U.S. poet laureate. The 16th woman to win the prestigious prize and the first American woman since Toni Morrison in 1993, Gluck is the author of 12 poetry

      3 min read

    • Article

      On Louise Glück

      Dec 1, 2021

      I WAS LYING in bed late at night, woeful, confused by another death, this one the death of a close friend; the losses had been mounting steadily, a bewildering number of losses, each one specific, difficult to accept, hard to overcome, and I must hav

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for After All

    4/5

    9 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Posthumously published volume, and of very high quality. A rare quality in American poets, William Matthews seems to have gotten better with age. I want to call him wise, in both senses of the word-- a wise guy and full of wisdom.

    Book preview

    After All - William Matthews

    First Mariner Books edition 2000

    Copyright © 1998 by the Estate of William Matthews

    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

    www.hmhco.com

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Matthews, William, 1942–1997.

    After all : last poems / William Matthews.

    p. cm.

    ISBN 0-395-91340-3

    ISBN 0-618-05685-8 (pbk.)

    I. Title.

    PS3563.A855A69 1998

    811'.54—dc21 98-22909 CIP

    eISBN 978-0-544-10168-5

    v3.0818

    Some of the poems in this book have appeared in the following publications: ACM (Another Chicago Magazine): Frazzle. The Atlantic Monthly: Dire Cure; No Return; The Shooting. Black Warrior Review: Big Tongue. Brilliant Corners: Mingus in Shadow. Crab Orchard Review: Finn Sheep; Oxymorons; Rescue. Double Take: Morningside Heights, July; A Poetry Reading at West Point; Promiscuous. Five Points: Inspiration; Manners; Hotel St. Pierre, Paris, 1995. The Gettysburg Review: Euphemisms; Mingus in Shadow. Hubbub: People Like Us. Many Mountains Moving: Ice Follies. The Marlboro Review: Trees in Harold Baumbach’s Paintings. The Nation: Rocas del Caribe, Isla Mujeres, 1967; Hotel Raphael, Rome, 1987. New England Review: Prescience. The New Yorker: Bucket’s Got a Hole in It; The Cloister; Truffle Pigs; Vermin. The Ohio Review: The Bar at the Andover Inn; Memory; Dog Days; Willow, Weep for Me. Poetry: The Place on the Corner; A Serene Heart at the Movies; Job Interview; Misgivings. Quarterly West: Sooey Generous. Shenandoah: Le Quatre Saisons, Montreal, 1979. Slate: Care. Solo: Defenestrations in Prague. Third Coast: Thinking About Thinking.

    for Celia

    Mingus in Shadow

    What you see in his face in the last

    photograph, when ALS had whittled

    his body to fit a wheelchair, is how much

    stark work it took to fend death off, and fail.

    The famous rage got eaten cell by cell.

    His eyes are drawn to slits against the glare

    of the blanched landscape. The day he died,

    the story goes, a swash of dead whales

    washed up on the Baja beach. Great nature grieved

    for him, the story means, but it was great

    nature that skewed his cells and siphoned

    his force and melted his fat like tallow

    and beached him in a wheelchair under

    a sombrero. It was human nature,

    tiny nature, to take the photograph,

    to fuss with the aperture and speed, to let

    in the right blare of light just long enough

    to etch pale Mingus to the negative.

    In the small, memorial world of that

    negative, he’s all the light there is.

    Morningside

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1