Curiosities
William Matthews
These essays reveal the poet's fascination with the relationship between language and emotional life
About the Book
"In my early poems, like 'Moving,' time is like a lens opening and slicing shut. If I imagined something emblematic, in significant posture, I could get a good picture. The method was good for the bases loaded, 3-and-0, none out; the strain on the pitcher's face tells all. But little of life organizes itself into symbolic moments. And symbolic moments may distort as much as they summarize; indeed, they may distort by summarizing. There are after all times when a pitcher has to live with having lost, as I would not allow myself to do when I was young, bending my private world as easily as water seems to bend light."
—William Matthews
The essays in this collection range in subject from poetry to travel to jazz and reveal William Matthews's fascination with the relationship between language and emotional life.
