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Miraculous Hours
NOMINATED FOR THE 2006 GERALD LAMPERT MEMORIAL AWARD
Matt Rader's debut collection is the fierce and tender retelling of our first "miraculous hours"--those early significant-and-strange interactions with the ones we love and the world we live in. From a world where wild dogs slide like ghosts into homes, water towers are "giant blue bullets unexploded in the earth" and walls are tortured to talk, Matt Rader forms a meticulously crafted reflection on how the events, experiences and environment of our early lives shape our sense of faith, our strongest convictions, and the map of the world we carry with us.
Matt Rader's debut collection is the fierce and tender retelling of our first "miraculous hours"--those early significant-and-strange interactions with the ones we love and the world we live in. From a world where wild dogs slide like ghosts into homes, water towers are "giant blue bullets unexploded in the earth" and walls are tortured to talk, Matt Rader forms a meticulously crafted reflection on how the events, experiences and environment of our early lives shape our sense of faith, our strongest convictions, and the map of the world we carry with us.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2005
9 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 27, 2023
Harshness and beauty hold hands in the woods.
Accidental death, and reverence, and the tenderness of witness.
Precious little survives a broken neck.
Accidental death, and reverence, and the tenderness of witness.
Precious little survives a broken neck.
January 28, 2022
There was a dance at the Big House.
In the motel a girl was learning her trade.
A woman drove herself to the hospital,
rubbing her thighs to bring back the blood.
The snow kept everything in place, freeze-framed.
Before his truck drove into a lamp pole
she chained the dog to the rotting maple.
Stinging nettle on the stove-top. In the air, coiled rope.
When the Angels ran the airfield everything trembled -
the woodsmoke they blew through, the hermit thrush,
reception on the RCA. With her mother's ears
she could hear Little Ben
missing the toilet bowl for the umpteenth time.
* * *
The stutter-speed of sprinklers in the neighbour's yard.
The whisper language of lawns and moths. Tonight,
on the front porch striking matchsticks with our thumbs,
the quick report of light doused out on our tongues,
it's the trick that speaks volumes: forget phosphorus, friction,
the miracle of combustion, it is how you hold fire
in your mouth then snuff it out like idle conversation.
* * *
Cars screech to a stop like a swarm of insects
humming on hold, transfixed by the eye
that hands above the road, unblinking, electric, controlled.
And a breath below the asphalt, the dark loam
continues: frost-heaves in the roadwork, potholes,
the unborn forest taking hold -
In the motel a girl was learning her trade.
A woman drove herself to the hospital,
rubbing her thighs to bring back the blood.
The snow kept everything in place, freeze-framed.
Before his truck drove into a lamp pole
she chained the dog to the rotting maple.
Stinging nettle on the stove-top. In the air, coiled rope.
When the Angels ran the airfield everything trembled -
the woodsmoke they blew through, the hermit thrush,
reception on the RCA. With her mother's ears
she could hear Little Ben
missing the toilet bowl for the umpteenth time.
- Early Episodes, after C.D. Wright's "Bent Tones", pg. 15
* * *
The stutter-speed of sprinklers in the neighbour's yard.
The whisper language of lawns and moths. Tonight,
on the front porch striking matchsticks with our thumbs,
the quick report of light doused out on our tongues,
it's the trick that speaks volumes: forget phosphorus, friction,
the miracle of combustion, it is how you hold fire
in your mouth then snuff it out like idle conversation.
- Miraculous Hours, pg. 27
* * *
Cars screech to a stop like a swarm of insects
humming on hold, transfixed by the eye
that hands above the road, unblinking, electric, controlled.
And a breath below the asphalt, the dark loam
continues: frost-heaves in the roadwork, potholes,
the unborn forest taking hold -
- , after Tomas Tranströmer, pg. 64
November 27, 2022
Good poems.
February 29, 2012
already enjoying the first section of this book. there's an understated wildness to it. that's all i can say for now.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews