Reading through Mike Matthews' collection, Ashes, I'm reminded of the central figure in Eliot's The Waste Land, who says of the crowd crossing London Bridge, "I had not thought death had undone so many." For the citizens that populate Matthews' poems, the line between existence and non-existence blurs, and they, too, are undone by an emptiness they cannot name as their "hours bleed away." Matthews' central narrative voice wanders these spaces as well,...
Related Subjects
Poetry