Search Party

Collected Poems

William Matthews, Sebastian Matthews, Stanley Plumly, Sebastian Matthews, Stanley Plumly

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780618565856
• eBook ISBN: 9780547348605
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

From the prize-winning poet: "A stunning volume . . . A master of the understatement, Matthews is wryly philosophical and self-deprecating." — Booklist
When William Matthews died, the day after his fifty-fifth birthday, America lost one of its most important poets, one whose humor and wit were balanced by deep emotion, whose off-the-cuff inventiveness belied the acuity of his verse. Drawing from his eleven collections and including twenty-three previously unpublished poems, Search Party is the essential compilation of this beloved poet's work. Edited by his son, Sebastian Matthews, and William Matthews's friend and fellow poet Stanley Plumly (who also introduces the book), Search Party is an excellent introduction to the poet and his glistening riffs on twentieth-century topics from basketball to food to jazz.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Ruining the New Road (1970)
• The Search Party
• Psychoanalysis
• Blues for John Coltrane, Dead at 41
• Coleman Hawkins (d. 1969), RIP
• Jealousy
• Moving
• Lust
• Faith of Our Fathers
• Why We Are Truly a Nation
• On Cape Cod a Child Is Stolen
• Driving All Night
• Oh Yes
• Old Girlfriends
• What You Need
• Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese 1959
• Yes!
• Sleek for the Long Flight (1972)
• Directions
• Sleeping Alone
• Driving Alongside the Housatonic River Alone on a Rainy April Night
• Another Beer
• Night Driving
• The Needle's Eye, the Lens
• An Egg in the Corner of One Eye
• The Cat
• Talk
• La Tâche 1962
• Snow
• Sleep
• Letter to Russell Banks
• Sticks & Stones (1975)
• The Portrait
• Mud Chokes No Eels
• Beer after Tennis, 22 August 1972
• Bring the War Home
• The Waste Carpet
• Sticks & Stones
• Rising and Falling (1979)
• Spring Snow
• Moving Again
• Snow Leopards at the Denver Zoo
• The News
• Strange Knees
• Living Among the Dead
• Left Hand Canyon
• In Memory of the Utah Stars
• Bud Powell, Paris, 1959
• Listening to Lester Young
• The Icehouse, Pointe au Baril, Ontario
• The Mail
• Taking the Train Home
• Waking at Dusk from a Nap
• In Memory of W. H. Auden
• Nurse Sharks
• Long
• Flood (1982)
• New
• Cows Grazing at Sunrise
• Housework
• Bystanders
• Twins
• Our Strange and Lovable Weather
• Descriptive Passages
• Good Company
• School Figures
• Pissing off the Back of the Boat into the Nivernais Canal
• The Penalty for Bigamy Is Two Wives
• Bmp Bmp
• Nabokov's Death
• On the Porch at the Frost Place, Franconia, NH
• Uncollected Poems (1967–1981)
• The Cloud
• Eternally Undismayed Are the Poolshooters
• The Drunken Baker
• Leaving the Cleveland Airport
• Dancing to Reggae Music
• Gossip
• Iowa City to Boulder
• Lions in the Cincinnati Zoo
• A Walk with John Logan, 1973
• Clearwater Beach, Florida, 1950
• Jilted
• A Happy Childhood (1984)
• Good
• Sympathetic
• Whiplash
• Bad
• The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
• Loyal
• A Happy Childhood
• Civilization and Its Discontents
• Familial
• Right
• The Theme of the Three Caskets
• Masterful
• An Elegy for Bob Marley
• Wrong
• Foreseeable Futures (1987)
• Fellow Oddballs
• April in the Berkshires
• Photo of the Author with a Favorite Pig
• The Accompanist
• Herd of Buffalo Crossing the Missouri on Ice
• Caddies' Day, the Country Club, a Small Town in Ohio
• Dog Life
• Recovery Room
• Black Box
• Vasectomy
• Blues If You Want (1989)
• Nabokov's Blues
• 39,000 Feet
• Mood Indigo
• Housecooling
• Homer's Seeing-Eye Dog
• The Blues
• Moonlight in Vermont
• Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
• School Days
• Little Blue Nude
• Onions
• Straight Life
• Time & Money (1995)
• Grief
• The Wolf of Gubbio
• Mingus at The Showplace
• The Bear at the Dump
• My Father's Body
• Time
• President Reagan's Visit to New York, October 1984
• Mingus at The Half Note
• Men at My Father's Funeral
• The Rookery at Hawthornden
• Note Left for Gerald Stern in an Office I Borrowed, and He Would Next, at a Summer Writers' Conference
• Cheap Seats, the Cincinnati Gardens, Professional Basketball, 1959
• The Rented House in Maine
• Mingus in Diaspora
• Tomorrow
• Money
• The Generations
• Cancer Talk
• A Night at the Opera
• Uncollected Poems (1982–1997)
• Another Real Estate Deal on Oahu
• Slow Work
• E lucevan le stelle
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Clarinetist
• Debt
• Condoms Then
• Condoms Now
• Phone Log
• Driving Through the Poconos, Route 80, 1:30 A.M., Snow
• The Buddy Bolden Cylinder
• The Memo
• Grandmother Talking
• Grandmother, Dead at 99 Years and 10 Months
• Names
• I Let a Song Go out of My Heart
• After All (1998)
• Mingus in Shadow
• Rescue
• Truffle Pigs
• Manners
• Promiscuous
• Sooey Generous
• Oxymorons
• Dire Cure
• Umbrian Nightfall
• The Cloister
• A Poetry Reading at West Point
• People Like Us
• Frazzle
• The Bar at the Andover Inn
• Big Tongue
• Bucket's Got a Hole in It
• Misgivings
• Care
• Index of Titles