After All: Last Poems
This is the touchingly entitled collection of poems William Matthews had completed shortly before dying, just after his fifty-fifth birthday in November 1997. Is death ever entirely unexpected? Not, perhaps, by a collector of experience, a gourmet of language, who can refer to "death flickering in you like a pilot light." In AFTER ALL, 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 last word from one of the most pensive and delicious of all our poets.

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After All: Last Poems
This is the touchingly entitled collection of poems William Matthews had completed shortly before dying, just after his fifty-fifth birthday in November 1997. Is death ever entirely unexpected? Not, perhaps, by a collector of experience, a gourmet of language, who can refer to "death flickering in you like a pilot light." In AFTER ALL, 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 last word from one of the most pensive and delicious of all our poets.

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After All: Last Poems

After All: Last Poems

by William Matthews
After All: Last Poems
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After All: Last Poems

After All: Last Poems

by William Matthews

Overview

This is the touchingly entitled collection of poems William Matthews had completed shortly before dying, just after his fifty-fifth birthday in November 1997. Is death ever entirely unexpected? Not, perhaps, by a collector of experience, a gourmet of language, who can refer to "death flickering in you like a pilot light." In AFTER ALL, 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 last word from one of the most pensive and delicious of all our poets.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780618056859
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 05/16/2000
Pages: 64
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

William Matthews won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1995 and the Ruth Lilly Award of the Modern Poetry Association in 1997. Born in Cincinnati in 1942, he was educated at Yale University and the University of North Carolina. At the time of his death in 1997, he was a professor of English and director of the writing program at the City University of New York.

Read an Excerpt

. . . listen,
my wary one, it's far to late
to unlove each other. Instead let's cook
something elaborate and not
invite anyone to share it but eat it
all up very very slowly.
—from "Misgivings"

Table of Contents

Title Page,
Contents,
Title,
Dedication,
Mingus in Shadow,
Morningside Heights, July,
The Place on the Corner,
Rescue,
Truffle Pigs,
Rocas del Caribe, Isla Mujeres, 1967,
Manners,
The Shooting,
Prescience,
Vermin,
Memory,
Promiscuous,
Le Quatre Saisons, Montreal, 1979,
No Return,
Sooey Generous,
Poem Ending with a Line from John Berryman,
A Serene Heart at the Movies,
Inspiration,
Hotel St. Pierre, Paris, 1995,
Oxymorons,
Dire Cure,
Euphemisms,
Umbrian Nightfall,
Hotel Raphael, Rome, 1987,
Finn Sheep,
Job Interview,
Defenestrations in Prague,
Ice Follies,
Dog Days,
Spent Light,
The Cloister,
A Poetry Reading at West Point,
People Like Us,
Frazzle,
The Bar at the Andover Inn,
Big Tongue,
Trees in Harold Baumbach 's Paintings,
Willow, Weep for Me,
Bucket's Got a Hole in It,
Thinking About Thinking,
Misgivings,
Care,

What People are Saying About This

Gerald Stern

Gerald Stern

An extraordinarily important American poet.

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Related Subjects

Poetry
American Poetry
20th Century American Poetry
Other American Poetry
American poetry->20th century
American poetry->Male authors
Poetry
American Poetry
20th Century American Poetry
Other American Poetry
American poetry->20th century
American poetry->Male authors

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