Curiosities

Series

• Poets on Poetry

"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.