Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Modern Life

by Matthea Harvey (Goodreads Author)

4.02 of 5 stars 4.02 · rating details · 462 ratings · 50 reviews

Matthea Harvey's Modern Life introduces a new voice that tries to exist in the gray area between good and evil, love and hate. In the central sequences, "The Future of Terror" and "The Terror of the Future," Harvey imagines citizens and soldiers at the end of their wits at the impending end of the world. Her prose pieces and lyrics examine the divided, halved self in poems...more

Paperback, 80 pages

Published October 2nd 2007 by Graywolf Press

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Unknown

New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2008

62nd out of 100 books — 17 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 789)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Jun 04, 2008 Juliet rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like clever yet random experimentation; people who like quirkily charming scenery

Shelves: poetry

Overall, this book fluctuated between two stars and three and one half stars for me.

One more pro: a few of the poems at the end made me envision rather quirkily charming Amelie-esque scenes.

One more con: What kind of a poem is this?

YOU HAVE MY EYES

Give them back.

(And that's the entire poem. Seriously, what the heck is that? It's silly, stupid, and annoying.)

*************************************************************
I am still not quite finshed with this book, but after reading more of it, I ha...more

2 likes · like · see review

May 03, 2011 Terry rated it 5 of 5 stars

In her third book of poetry titled Modern Life Harvey comes back with what seems to be an even balance between her previous two books, at least in terms of style. Again she touches on love, but with a hint of wry humor : “Your horoscope read: /You have an infectious smile. Mine said:/ Check the glove compartment” (68). Again with the paint imagery: “Dip that tiny brush into your paintbox and mix up something nice and muddy for me” (28).
She returns to using titles as the set point for her poems a...more

like · see review

Oct 15, 2012 Sean Brower rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

While I did not hate Pity the Bathtub... as much as others in my workshop, I did find its density frustrating. Two things have helped to alleviate that pressure put on me as a reader: one, hearing and seeing Harvey read her own poetry, and two, reading the more practiced and loose poetry of Modern Life. For the former – I was surprised at how calmly, reflectively, and cleanly the poems appeared when read aloud, and that gave me an insight into how her imagination works and how her poetry should...more While I did not hate Pity the Bathtub... as much as others in my workshop, I did find its density frustrating. Two things have helped to alleviate that pressure put on me as a reader: one, hearing and seeing Harvey read her own poetry, and two, reading the more practiced and loose poetry of Modern Life. For the former – I was surprised at how calmly, reflectively, and cleanly the poems appeared when read aloud, and that gave me an insight into how her imagination works and how her poetry should sound; as to the latter – these poems utilize a theme and a structure just as well as Harvey’s first collection, but with the added bonuses of more punctuation, a bit more variation in form, and imagery that tends to be a bit more accessible to… well, to modern audiences (animal rights, science fiction, American predilections, etc.).

Probably the most interesting pieces for me ended up being the Robo-Boy poems, and not simply because of my appreciation for the science fiction or the weird; rather, I think these pieces worked for me because they actually have a character (a person, ironically) who can be followed, pitied, and enjoyed, as well as a story that goes somewhere. Pity the Bathtub… offered journeys of “the turn,” where from one line to the next, the story was recreated and subjects shifted; Modern Life finds a balance between that schizophrenia and a poetic narrative, and that, I believe, is this collection’s strong suit. “Moving Day” also does something somewhat meta with that “subject,” as when Robo-Boy learns about what “subjectivity” means, his own subjectivity shifts, and the subject of the poem turns to emotion and all of the questions associated with artificial life and feelings.

The “The Future of Terror” and the “Terror of the Future” series both fall back to Pity’s constant turning, but they do so with punctuation (laced with a cynical tone?) and without the obsession with coiling lines. Harvey’s addition of extreme short-form poems like “You Have My Eyes” and “New Friends” relieve the eyes, and give me room to breathe. And finally, it’s the first few poems that set up Harvey’s thematic structure – an almost didactic reproach of modern sensibilities. Overall, I have to say this is a strong collection that appears more mature than Harvey’s first book, and at the same time no less imaginative or moving.

[Upon further reflection, I'd have to give this 5 stars. The beauty of her work here isn't really reflected in my review, but this is a phenomenal collection.]
(less)

like · see review

Nov 15, 2007 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

I heard Matthea Harvey read at Open Books last night. She was disarmingly down-to-earth: charming & funny, & her reading kicked ass! This book is likely her best yet, from what I've heard/read so far. There is something for everyone in here: prose poems, strange lyric poems, grotesque animal poems ("Dinna'Pig"!) and flower petals like "little meat sunsets".

1 like · like · see review

Dec 01, 2009 Steven rated it 4 of 5 stars

Before picking up this collection, I had read a few of Matthea Harvey's poems in literary journals and I was struck by their playful use of language (akin to Harryette Mullen), humor and humanity. All of those skills play out well in this book and the variety of forms is refreshing, ranging from prose poems to the loose abecedarians of the two "future"/"terror" sections. But, like Ms. Mullen's work, it's only when all of this playfulness somehow connects to actual human experience that the poems...more

like · see review

Jan 04, 2012 Christina Marie Rau rated it 3 of 5 stars

Matthea Harvey's Modern Life contains prose poetry that completely legitimizes the form. Her poetic blocks take one instance, flesh it out, and sum it up, all while maintaining a poetic voice.

When I read the sections The Future of Terror and Terror of The Future, not only did I fully appreciate the chiasmus, but I also thought, Wow she's got a way with alliteration. Each poem grows from alliteration and some assonance with a bit of internal rhyming. Then I read an end-note that explains that tho...more

like · see review

Nov 08, 2012 Emma Bolden rated it 3 of 5 stars

I feel really bad about giving this three stars, and therefore I feel compelled to explain myself: the three stars here are in comparison to other Matthea Harvey books. I mean, Pity the Bathtub and Sad Little Breathing Machine are like books constructed by a god. This one just wasn't my favorite, and that might just be because it's so different, and therefore I am unfairly dissing Matthea Harvey for doing exactly what a poet should do: growing and changing and changing again. Though I'm not sure...more

like · see review

Dec 13, 2008 Kimberly rated it 4 of 5 stars

I wish this were a book of short stories but otherwise I'm ok. Very inventive, sometimes beautiful. Perhaps more beautiful in the middle (to me at least, where I thought there were people, that I might relate to) and less beautiful when I realized that "The Future of Terror" and "Terror of the Future" were meant to be abecedarian, and then all I could do was struggle not to alphabetize while reading. I sense she would get along well with Jesse Ball. I sense I want to impose some limits on both o...more

like · see review

May 04, 2013 Diann Blakely added it

A runner-up for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, Harvey offers a mixture of prose poems and standard verse in *Modern Life*, which accurately reflects the sense of foreboding terror that fills any serious news-watcher. Without her dazzling skill for accuracy and imagery, her poems would be heavy with the turgidity and portentousness that sinks so much contemporary poetry along these lines.

Her closeness of observation manifests itself in “Ode to the Double-Sided Nature of Things,” a Gothi...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 08, 2010 Ryo Yamaguchi rated it 5 of 5 stars

In a bit of a rush, but I want to get this quick review off to you. Modern Life is the third in Harvey's collections of poems and is most notable for the two sections, "The Future of Terror," and "The Terror of the Future," which anchor the book like two firm columns running through this seven sectioned collection. Please pick up a copy at Graywolf. Like much of Harvey's work, the book as a whole is extremely organized, with a parallel section structure that runs roughly like this:

Intro
The Futur...more

like · see review

Oct 26, 2009 Mike Gross rated it 5 of 5 stars

Matthea Harvey’s world depicted in Modern Life is raw and broke: a system, and all of its implications, gone awry. The metal of machines, once new and useful, has rusted; the scientific discoveries, once progressive and optimistic, have devolved into hideous creatures: hollowed out carcasses (“The Empty Pet Factory”), spliced and mutilated (“How We Learned to Hold Hands”) for human needs; the ancient notion of freedom and free will has collapsed into a crippling fear of terror. Modern Life is wr...more Matthea Harvey’s world depicted in Modern Life is raw and broke: a system, and all of its implications, gone awry. The metal of machines, once new and useful, has rusted; the scientific discoveries, once progressive and optimistic, have devolved into hideous creatures: hollowed out carcasses (“The Empty Pet Factory”), spliced and mutilated (“How We Learned to Hold Hands”) for human needs; the ancient notion of freedom and free will has collapsed into a crippling fear of terror. Modern Life is wrought with skinless, misplaced creatures vying for cover, for protection. Reading this book of poetry reminds anyone who’s had a skinless wound what it was like for it to be blown on: the cold openness, the pink, the excess of the senses, the instinctual desire to cover over and wait for a healing, for the dumb numbness of skin. After 1000 years of enlightenment, discovery and subsequent innovation, after every stone has been looked at, every creature has been dissected, every atom torn to pieces, forced into diagrams and models, after everything has been seen, what’s left politically, scientifically, psychologically, physically, looks much like an atomic bomb has exploded.

It’s in this aftermath that we enter Harvey’s world through the poem “Implications of Modern Life.” The blood, the meat, the fat of this text puts us squarely within a butcher’s shop: there’s a sense that everything is dead, shaped into cutlets, and placed in a window. You feel everything is cold, that your fingernails are lined in red. The flowers are cut meat (line 1); skin has lost its essential function and now serves as decoration (1). Everything is red and pink, orange like the sunset (2). There is an immediate desire (need) to cover everything over in coats of fur, to bandage (4 & 5), that coincides with a revulsion, a denial of acquaintance. But it’s not until there’s (a) love and its coinciding yells for a resurrection that the voice, perhaps us, admits blame in this massacred world: “I made the ham flowers” (9) seems to say “I am the butcher.” But along with this acceptance comes the unrealistic expectation that it will undo the disaster. The voice turns into that of a naïve child urging his now dead mother to rise up out of the hospital bed: “Get up, dear animal. Here is your pasture…your river…your barn….I will find you fresh hay” (9-13). But the end is a silence: the horse seems to say, “I’m sorry, I wish I could, but not here and not now.” And we turn the page not knowing how we can move on without you, Horse, the warm world now long gone.

In this way, with a question, Matthea Harvey begins Modern Life: can it be fixed? The question is, as would be expected, much more than a philosophical one. One can’t help but to wonder if, instead of a political discussion, Modern Life is a commentary on the state of contemporary poetics (two sides of the same coin, I suppose). Has the Levertovs of modern poetry pulled out all the bones from all the octopuses? What’s left, but the skinless discards? Contemporary poetry finds an animal, an experience or an object perhaps, and wants (urges, naively) it to jump, to live, to be: but all that it can do is be dead. Is it the degradation of language, the hundreds of years of Western progress? Is it the mechanization, and now the cannibalization of our world that has killed the horse? At the end of “Implication,” we don’t know the answer. We want to say, “yes, it is, it was me, I did it, I believed and made the ham flowers: get up, Horse,” we can write something good someday: we’ll teach it in classrooms, we’ll sing it as anthems, we’ll make wars out of it. I will feed you and love you, Horse, if only you just wake up. *silence*
(less)

like · see review

Mar 30, 2009 Robert Beveridge rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: cuy-co-pub-lib, finished, best-i-read-2009-edition

Matthea Harvey, Modern Life (Graywolf Press, 2007)

“The ham flowers have veins and are rimmed in rind, a little meat sunset.”
(“Implications for Modern Life”)

I opened Matthea Harvey's Modern Life, turned to the first page, and was greeted with this as an introduction to her work. How could I not immediately fall in love? And I'm happy to say that as the collection progresses, it pretty much stay this good. Of course, the pit- and pratfalls of this sort of comic-grotesque brilliance do appear along...more

like · see review

Jan 24, 2008 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

A reader of Harvey’s previous collections will no doubt find familiar ground in Modern Life: dream-like narratives, the frequent appearance of horses, an inventive playfulness (“Pug owners are 90% more likely to deny that they look like their pets than other dog owners,” for instance). Harvey is attracted to the proper noun and in her poems we encounter “Ghost Morse Code” for the stripes on the road (“not the new ones but the ones the wheels had worn away”), the representation of the sun as a “G...more

like · see review

Oct 11, 2007 Peter rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

Matthea Harvey, during her reading on September 16, stated that her new collection of poetry, Modern Life, dealt with the notion of halving. This trope of halves is well-established in the book's imagery, as centaurs, the Berlin Wall, a half-robot/half-boy, and other halves and halving mechanisms appear intermittently. These halves contribute to her book's rhythm, as well as its proportions and sense of space. The blank pages diving the book into sections seemed to pose questions concerning each...more Matthea Harvey, during her reading on September 16, stated that her new collection of poetry, Modern Life, dealt with the notion of halving. This trope of halves is well-established in the book's imagery, as centaurs, the Berlin Wall, a half-robot/half-boy, and other halves and halving mechanisms appear intermittently. These halves contribute to her book's rhythm, as well as its proportions and sense of space. The blank pages diving the book into sections seemed to pose questions concerning each section's autonomy: is the book itself an addition of fractions? Are the short poems fractions of the larger prose block? Are halves adequate, and if not, what are they lacking? "Halve" could also function as a simple pun, or "have." As I read the book, I sensed a undercurrent of yearning and longing that seeped up in at different points throughout the book. Many of Harvey's characters don't want to be halves, but their individual longings to have certain things help to provide the collection with an intimate sense of tension.

A restrictive form, such as the loose abecedarian patterning in Harvey's future/terror sequences, illuminates the poet's compositional freedom within a given set of parameters while exposing the poet's concurrent desire for unbounded creative expression. Harvey's future/terror poems are narrated by two discrete speakers - one military, one civilian - meaning that not only is the poetic form constrained, but the speakers' assumed personalities are occupationally bound. A soldier may not reveal a war's explicit details, while these very details are unaccessible from the civilian realm, and so forth.

Through all these formal restraints, each of Harvey's narratives achieves great movement. For example, the poem "Terror of the Future / 5" begins, "Technically, 'lonely me' was a tautology. / No one had ever stuffed carnations / in my tailpipe or planted a symbolic / lipsticked kiss on the swingdoor / to my kitchen" (65). Harvey's 21 future/terror poems are themselves something of a tautology, lending this particular piece to the book's meta-narrative. The future/terror poems topically confront our nation's war in Iraq, and mimic the obsessive recycling of stale war rhetoric, but they also speak to an emotional longing amplified in the book's trope of halves, such as being a single half in a relationship. Abecedarian, aside from meaning "arranged alphabetically," also gestures towards something rudimentary or elementary. The civilian is disconnected from the soldier, craving carnations, or a spike in banal domesticity. The personality of the soldier, physically separated by the book's midsection, is lost in the mindless repetition of soldierly life. Words are the sole passage between Harvey's characters, and a rudimentary source of human contact.

Modern Life is wonderfully arranged, utilizing the medium of the book as an amendment to the narrative. The harmony amongst black humor, sound values, poetic form, and other craft elements helps to refresh the somewhat clichéd notion of "modern life." Harvey's book illuminates the precarious world we live in, with its rampant commodification, arbitrary class distinctions, ambivalent peoples, and the sort. Harvey's satire, as a rhetorical strategy, absolves the text from didacticism and presents a fresh critique on the contemporary world.

(less)

like · see review

Feb 27, 2009 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars

Hmm... I'm torn. I want to love this book, as I love Matthea. But I found the book as a whole somewhat disjointed. I didn't like the Robo-boy deviations. Everything else was pure opium.

I'm still trying to get my hands on Sad Little Breathing Machine, as the idea of having a poetic engine is quite genius. And I wanna see how she carries it beyond the one poem I came across.

I have a feeling I'll enjoy it more than Modern Life.

like · see review

Apr 20, 2011 Rob the Obscure rated it 4 of 5 stars

Harvey is pushing the limits. It's refreshing to see a skilled poet that is not resting in safe, comfortable waters.

She is pushing the boundaries - the boundaries between poetry and fiction, the boundaries between romance and sex, the boundaries between comedy and alienation, and the boundaries between depth and humor.

It's an education in writing for the 21st century.

like · see review

Jan 04, 2009 karen rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who have just read littlest hitler

Shelves: pomes, favorites

these are poems that even a non-poetry lover can appreciate. most of them read like little bite-sized prose pieces with accessible imagery and just enough quirk to get my attention. i seem to have a knack for subconsciously selecting things to read that are somehow similar in tone and vibe, because it was a really great follow-up to littlest hitler. yay, me!

16 likes · like · see review

Apr 08, 2009 Kristin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

Harvey's third book of poetry veers off from her first two, into a future at once as strange and familiar as our own. Though some of the work is written in form and can get a bit tedious (especially "The Future of Terror" and "Terror of the Future"), this seems purposeful, and her focus in this work is broad and sensory, and much of the poetry is deeply poignant, particularly in a time as uncertain as ours.

like · see review

Jul 22, 2008 Lightsey added it

You can always read a book as an example of its author's psychological state, but I haven't come across many books that beg so fiercely for such a reading. Some readers seem to be finding Modern Life great tripping fun, but I confess I'm not laughing. Instead, I'm (unfashionably, I know) worried for Harvey. She/her poetic voice seems trapped in a bubble of isolation and craving, fear of emotion and desperate need. A shifting and elusive "you" moves through the book, never satisfying the "I"--and...more

like · see review

Nov 25, 2008 Timothy Green rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: recommended

Extremely hit and miss, but the hits are all home runs. "The Future of Terror" sequence probably captures the post-9/11 sentiment better than anything I've read...an era in American history which hopefully ended Nov. 4th.

like · see review

Jan 29, 2012 Siel Ju rated it 4 of 5 stars

Lots of surreal absurdist story-poems -- i.e. the Robo-Boy series. Some constraint-based work -- The Future of Terror and The Terror of the Future composed primarily of words between Terror and Future in the dictionary.

like · see review

Oct 03, 2011 pearl rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry, dreamlike

Read this over the summer for my Art of Narrative class. Wonderful, entirely consumable and delightful, post-apocalyptic and sad. Poetry for people who don't like poetry, and fresh dewy gems for those who love it.

like · see review

Nov 20, 2009 Erin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Amazing form and excellent scenarios for the future of life! One of my favorite books from poetry class this term. Like Roboboy, I now consider Mrs. Butterworth one of the grandest heroes of American culture.

like · see review

Nov 16, 2010 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

Matthea Harvey writes with sparkle and delight, even when her theme turns dark. Because of the style--what I'd call something like surrealism or magical realism--there is an emotional distance that limits my connection with the work. Still, some delightful lines, like: "Our first protests were tentative:/ we tapped on their taillights with teaspoons,".

like · see review

Jun 26, 2011 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars

"Truly it's exhausting how many minds there are to swoop in and out of." -- Once around the Park with Omniscience

"The myocardiograph measured our heartache and it was more than the manuals said we could manage." -- Terror of the Future /1

like · see review

Aug 20, 2009 Kristen Hoggatt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Such a delightful collection. If the end of the world is going to be like this, I'm totally ready.

like · see review

Nov 23, 2008 Joseph rated it 3 of 5 stars

Kind of classy appropriation of avant-garde techniques. It's hybrid, dig?

like · see review

Dec 16, 2007 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I am in love with everything about this book, except for the "terror of the future", "future of terror" sections. Those sections felt like a departure from the beautiful explorations/examinations that take place in the other poems. The Roboboy poems were my favorite - "No One Will See Themselves in You" is probably my favorite poem in the whole collection.

I have only read through the book once. I want to spend some more time with the "terror" sections. They are appealing on some level - but the...more

like · see review

Jun 21, 2009 Tess rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

This must be one of my favorites -- and Oni Buchanan's Spring.

like · see review

Feb 28, 2011 Jude Bee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Pretty amazing for what it is: self-contained.

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 26 27 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

Genres

Poetry

104 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

Elegy
by Mary Jo Bang
Cocktails
by D.A. Powell
Wind in a Box
by Terrance Hayes
Selected Poems
by James Tate
Steal Away: Selected and New Poems
by C.D. Wright

About Matthea Harvey

Matthea Harvey is the author of three books of poetry--Modern Life, Sad Little Breathing Machine and Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form, and one children's book, The Little General and the Giant Snowflake. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence and lives in Brooklyn.

More about Matthea Harvey...

Books by Matthea Harvey

Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form

The Little General and the Giant Snowflake

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Modern Life

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

title link	preview: Modern Life
avg rating	preview: Modern Life Goodreads rating: 4.02 (462 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/356529.Modern_Life?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312026798l/356529.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/356529.Modern_Life?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Modern Life by Matthea Harvey[/url]

Modern Life

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Matthea Harvey

Books by Matthea Harvey

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About Modern Life

new topic
Discuss This Book