Clive Matson

Allen Cohen

Creates an alternative poetic response to the din of collective anger and hysteria that has characterized our national dialogue since 9/11/2001.

Poets on 9/11

An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind

This new edition of Clive Matsons early poems includes all of Diane di Primas Poets Press version 1,000 copies were sold out in 1966-67 and adds significant uncollected pieces from the same period.At once obstreperous and innocent, these poems celebrate a place where emotion, sex, and religion come together with overwhelming intensity. In the fifties and sixties Beat Generation writers were revisiting this edgy, full-blooded romantic tradition and Matson joined the exploration with youthful energy. But the quest was fraught with tension.To Matsons heart and mind, the Beatific vision morphs into something as sinister as it is beautiful, sex is utterly consuming yet fosters hostility, emotion is an exhilarating current as dangerous as a tsunami, drugs are glorious and bring one to the brink of death. Writing these poems were a crucial part of a young persons growth, as demonstrated by the open, accessible style. The poets overriding concern is understanding the self and the world. Be-bop and cool riffs, common in the Beats, are truncated or undercut in Matsons work, to arrive quickly and precisely at the point.Mainline to the Heart and Other Poems expresses a confluence of personal and historical forces. Clive Matson was coming of age at the same time the culture was at the height of its 1960s explosion. While the poems cast a sobering light on Beat exuberance, Matsons vibrant imagery makes the personal, visionary, and sexual excitement impossible to deny. Steve Weltner writes, These poems speak about desire with an exactitude too excruciating to be pornographic. The power of their eroticism has not diminished.

Clive Matson

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