After All: Last Poems

by William Matthews

Completely shortly before his death at age fifty-four, the award-winning poet's last collection of work considers life's undying pleasures--music, wine, and love--and features the poem, "Dire Cure," which describes how his wife survived cancer.

Genres: Poetry

55 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

William Procter Matthews III was an American poet and essayist.

Reviews

[Alarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read Matthews’ collected poems and knew that I loved his writing, especially his late poems, so I was delighted to find this book in my library. It’s tragic he died at age 55. I want more poems like this.

This tiny volume, only 44 poems, 55 pages, is huge in insight, subject matter, enjoyment, and even laughs. It contains my favorite of his poems, “A Poetry Reading at West Point.” Here’s a link if you haven’t read it.

http://www.middlewaysociety.org/poetr...

Another poem I find hilarious is “Rescue,” about his cat’s gymnastics while he’s taking a shower. I love poetry that blends humor with all the other aspects of life. This book includes several poems about word play (clever, but less sincere), his wife’s terrible time with cancer treatment, truffle-hunting pigs, a history of pork, jazz musician Mingus (who figures heavily in his early poems), travel to different parts of the world, his son’s wedding, a party with Martha Mitchell, his troubled love life: you get the drift.

It seems Matthews could find inspiration anywhere. He demonstrates how in “Finn Sheep.” On a visit to Scotland, he had a bit of writer’s block. Instead of making himself miserable, staring at the blank page, he grabbed a bus to Edinburgh for inspiration. On the way, he “saw some astonishing sheep with canoe-shaped ears like a jackrabbit’s.”

“…And I needed to know the name
of such a sheep, because I never met
a fact I didn’t like. And because it’s not
that I believe in words, but I believe
by words….”

Here are a few more short quotes I especially loved

From “Job Interview”: “A good thing I speak fluent Fog.”

From “Truffle Pigs”: “They know what to ignore; these pigs are innocent of metaphor.”

From “Defenestrations in Prague”: “…death flickering in you like a pilot light.”

From “Inspiration”:

“…Today

I loathe poetry. I hate the clotted
dicty poems of the great modernists,
disdainful of their truant audience…

I hate
poetry readings and the dreaded verb
‘to share.’ Let me share this knife with your throat,
suggested Mack…”

[Jade Capiñanes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This poetry collection has the wit most contemporary poems (which take themselves too seriously) obviously lack.

[Mark Underwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes too plainspoken for my Stevensian instincts, I nonetheless take great pleasure in a number of the poems. Here are a few examples:

Yes, there's a cure for youth, but it's fatal.
And a cure for grace: you say what you mean,
but of course you have to know what that is.

-from "Manners"


"The farther we go, the more we give up,"
we could complaint, but there's always more
to lose. The vacuum that dearth abhors
is dearth. We all drink from a leaking up.

from "Memory"


Most apt of all:

. . .I'm the bad mood if you try
to cheer me out of I'll smack you. Impasse
is where I come to escape from. It takes
a deep belief in one's own ignorance;
it takes, I tell you, desperate measures.

from "Inspiration"

There's plenty of inspiration to be had. Despair, too; Matthews died at 55, and he was a disciplined writer.

[RUSA CODES · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the 1999 RUSA Notable Books winners. For the complete list, go to http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rus...

[Mills College Library]

811.54 M442a 1998

[Jeff Youngstrom]

My review from October 10, 1999

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is at its best at its cruellest. I was too jealous of the foreign travel to enjoy those poems.