An Interview with William Matthews
The Influence of Translation and Music on Poetry (Conducted at the Meachem Writers Conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee in Fall 1996.) DH: What are the greatest influences on your work? WM: One [...]
Snow Leopards at the Denver Zoo
There are only a hundred or so snow leopards alive, and three of them here. Hours I watch them jump down and jump up, water being poured. Though if you fill a glass fast with water, it rings high [...]
Mingus in Shadow
What you see in his face in the last photograph, when ALS had whittled his body to fit a wheelchair, is how much stark work it took to fend death off, and fail. The famous rage got eaten cell by [...]
Mingus in Diaspora
You could say, I suppose, that he ate his way out, like the prisoner who starts a tunnel with a spoon, or you could say he was one in whom nothing was lost, who took it all in, or that he was big [...]
Mingus at The Half Note
Two dozen bars or so into “Better Get It in Your Soul,” the band mossy with sweat, May 1960 at The Half Note, the rain on the black streets outside dusted here and there by the pale pollen of the [...]
To Bill Matthews
Ave atque vale; hail and farewell dear friend. When William Matthews died on November 12, 1997, one day after his 55th birthday, writers and friends everywhere grieved that we had lost the [...]
William Matthews
William Matthews was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 11, 1942. He earned a B.A. from Yale and an M.A. from the University of North Carolina. During his lifetime he published eleven books of [...]
