Poetry. John Matthias's NEW SELECTED POEMS brings together both short and longer poems from eight previous books. It ranges from early lyrics written in America during the 1960s to meditative and epistolary poems deriving from his years spent in England during the 70s and 80s, formal experiments engaging issues of poetics, and sequences like Northern Summer, Facts from an Apocryphal Midwest, A Compostela Diptych, and Cuttings. "Over thiry years Matthias has built up a splendidly wrought mosaic of western culture and history shot through with personal inquiry and discovery. It's a fascinating, unfinished journey, a secular but passionate pilgrimage"--Stand Magazine.

Author City: SOUTH BEND, IN USA

John Matthias was born in 1941 in Columbus, Ohio. For many years he taught at the University of Notre Dame and continues to serve as poetry editor of Notre Dame Review. He has been a Visiting Fellow in poetry at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and lived for much of the 70s and 80s in East Anglia, England. His books of verse include Turns, Crossing, Northern Summer, A Gathering of Ways, Swimming at Midnight, Beltane at Aphelion, Pages, Working Progress, Working Title, New Selected Poems, and Kedging. He has also published translations from the Swedish, editions of David Jones's work, and a volume of literary criticism, Reading Old Friends. In 1998 Robert Archambeau edited Word Play Place, a selection of essays on Matthias's work. Another book of essays on his poetry will soon be published in the Salt Companion series, edited by Joe Francis Doerr.