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Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets
Black Aperture: Poems
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Poetry (2013)In his moving debut collection, Matt Rasmussen faces the tragedy of his brother's suicide, refusing to focus on the expected pathos, blurring the edge between grief and humor. In Outgoing, the speaker erases his brother's answering machine message to save his family from the shame of dead you / answering calls. In other poems, once-ordinary objects become dreamlike. A buried light bulb blooms downward, a flower / of smoldering filaments. A refrigerator holds an evening landscape, a tinfoil lake, vegetables / dying in the crisper. Destructive and redemptive, Black Aperture opens to the complicated entanglements of mourning: damage and healing, sorrow and laughter, and torment balanced with moments of relief.
72 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2013
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2099 people want to read
About the author
Matt Rasmussen
13 books27 followersMatt Rasmussen’s poetry has been published in Gulf Coast, Cimarron Review, H_NGM_N, New York Quarterly, Paper Darts, and at Poets.org. He’s received awards, grants, and residencies from The Bush Foundation, The Minnesota State Arts Board, Jerome Foundation, Intermedia Arts, The Anderson Center in Red Wing, MN, and The Corporation of Yaddo. He is a 2012 McKnight Artist Fellow, a former Peace Corps Volunteer, and Assistant Professor of English at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota. His first book of poems, Black Aperture, won the 2012 Walt Whitman Award.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 132 reviews
February 16, 2025
A 64-page poetry book, like Cheez-Its, can go down in a hurry. As I should in real life, however, I found myself thinking about my "food" in this case, chewing it more slowly, savoring it---perhaps because this is heavier fare, the entire book being about suicide (the poet's brother).
Bleak. But it's clear the poems were therapeutic for Rasmussen to write. Hopefully for his parents (whom he dedicated the book to) also. Suicides are so hard on those left behind.
This book first came out in 2012, when Jane Hirshfield chose it for the Walt Whitman Award. Rasmussen made her job easy for her, I'm guessing. The first two of three sections are especially outstanding. The third, while it takes its foot slightly off the pedal, still offers some sterling poetry. That said, having finished the book in two hours, I took another to read Sections 1 and 2 over again.
Here is a poem from Section 1:
747
The man who
drew the first
map was able
to see through
the eye
of a bird.
Fields speckled
with snow
are covered
in clouds
like dark faces
veiled twice.
I have told
you too much,
forgive us both.
O sun,
O stainless fuselage,
weave us
between the veils
before we darken
and dip into
the twinkling net.
Each small town
a blemish
on the night's skin,
each city
a tumor of light.
The second section, called "Elegy in X Parts" offers ten poems in honor of his brother. It is my favorite of the three. You can read one of the poems from this part on my web site here. Recommended, even th0ugh it's the holiday season. Just follow it up with something more uplifting, is all.
Bleak. But it's clear the poems were therapeutic for Rasmussen to write. Hopefully for his parents (whom he dedicated the book to) also. Suicides are so hard on those left behind.
This book first came out in 2012, when Jane Hirshfield chose it for the Walt Whitman Award. Rasmussen made her job easy for her, I'm guessing. The first two of three sections are especially outstanding. The third, while it takes its foot slightly off the pedal, still offers some sterling poetry. That said, having finished the book in two hours, I took another to read Sections 1 and 2 over again.
Here is a poem from Section 1:
747
The man who
drew the first
map was able
to see through
the eye
of a bird.
Fields speckled
with snow
are covered
in clouds
like dark faces
veiled twice.
I have told
you too much,
forgive us both.
O sun,
O stainless fuselage,
weave us
between the veils
before we darken
and dip into
the twinkling net.
Each small town
a blemish
on the night's skin,
each city
a tumor of light.
The second section, called "Elegy in X Parts" offers ten poems in honor of his brother. It is my favorite of the three. You can read one of the poems from this part on my web site here. Recommended, even th0ugh it's the holiday season. Just follow it up with something more uplifting, is all.
September 14, 2019
This book has been on my shelf since the Poetry Out Loud podcast featured Rasmussen when he was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2013. I had never read it cover to cover though, which I recently got the urge to sit down and do.
When Rasmussen was in his MFA program, he was asked by his instructor, the late poet Bill Knott, to write a poem "with some personal investment." That poem, about his older brother's suicide when Rasmussen was still in high school, eventually lead to this short collection. It's somber, beautiful and often, understandably, angry. Recurring themes are exploring the space left by the dead as a physical vacuum and the futile and vertigo-laden drive to reverse and rewrite time.
It seems too antiseptic to talk about themes though with a book that is so teeming with raw emotion as this one is. Here is a short video of Rasmussen reading two of my favorites from this collection (although picking favorites with a collection like this is almost impossible): "Outgoing" and "Reverse Suicide." This will give you an idea if the rest of the collection would appeal to you. It's one of the best modern poetry books I've read.
When Rasmussen was in his MFA program, he was asked by his instructor, the late poet Bill Knott, to write a poem "with some personal investment." That poem, about his older brother's suicide when Rasmussen was still in high school, eventually lead to this short collection. It's somber, beautiful and often, understandably, angry. Recurring themes are exploring the space left by the dead as a physical vacuum and the futile and vertigo-laden drive to reverse and rewrite time.
It seems too antiseptic to talk about themes though with a book that is so teeming with raw emotion as this one is. Here is a short video of Rasmussen reading two of my favorites from this collection (although picking favorites with a collection like this is almost impossible): "Outgoing" and "Reverse Suicide." This will give you an idea if the rest of the collection would appeal to you. It's one of the best modern poetry books I've read.
February 21, 2014
I wish the god of this place / would put me in its mouth / until I dissolve, until / the field doesn't end / and I am broken down / like a rifle
The lines above from Horse Grazes in My Shadow were enough to capture my attention and urge me to source a copy of Black Aperture pronto.
There is no question that this poet writes with insight and ingenuity and the poems specifically on suicide are especially powerful, but overall I was a tad nonplussed.
I have an inkling that it has a lot to do with me, having recently lost a very close friend unexpectedly, it's hard not to want someone to write your pain for you, a way of getting your head around the concept of finality etc, but that's a lot of baggage to bring to the reader table, so take my 3 stars with a pinch of salt, I'll leave you with my favourite from the collection:
747
The man who
drew the first
map was able
to see through
the eye
of a bird.
Fields speckled
with snow
like dark faces
veiled twice.
I have told
you too much,
forgive us both.
O sun,
O stainless fuselage,
weave us
between the veils
before we darken
and dip into
the twinkling net.
Each small town
a blemish
on the night's skin,
each city
a tumor of light.
The lines above from Horse Grazes in My Shadow were enough to capture my attention and urge me to source a copy of Black Aperture pronto.
There is no question that this poet writes with insight and ingenuity and the poems specifically on suicide are especially powerful, but overall I was a tad nonplussed.
I have an inkling that it has a lot to do with me, having recently lost a very close friend unexpectedly, it's hard not to want someone to write your pain for you, a way of getting your head around the concept of finality etc, but that's a lot of baggage to bring to the reader table, so take my 3 stars with a pinch of salt, I'll leave you with my favourite from the collection:
747
The man who
drew the first
map was able
to see through
the eye
of a bird.
Fields speckled
with snow
like dark faces
veiled twice.
I have told
you too much,
forgive us both.
O sun,
O stainless fuselage,
weave us
between the veils
before we darken
and dip into
the twinkling net.
Each small town
a blemish
on the night's skin,
each city
a tumor of light.
July 25, 2015
3.5, but damn, do I love this one:
Chekhov's Gun
Nothing ever absolutely has to happen. The gun
doesn't have to be fired. When our hero sits
on the edge of his bed contemplating the pistol
on his nightstand, you have to believe he might
not use it. Then the theatre is sunk in blackness.
The audience is a log waiting to be split open. The faint
scuff of feet. Objects are picked up, shuffled away.
Other things are put down. Based on the hushed sounds
you guess: a bed, some walls, a dresser. You feel
everything shift. You sense yourslf being picked up,
set down. A cone of light cracks overhead. The audience's
eyes flicker toward you like droplets of water.
Chekhov's Gun
Nothing ever absolutely has to happen. The gun
doesn't have to be fired. When our hero sits
on the edge of his bed contemplating the pistol
on his nightstand, you have to believe he might
not use it. Then the theatre is sunk in blackness.
The audience is a log waiting to be split open. The faint
scuff of feet. Objects are picked up, shuffled away.
Other things are put down. Based on the hushed sounds
you guess: a bed, some walls, a dresser. You feel
everything shift. You sense yourslf being picked up,
set down. A cone of light cracks overhead. The audience's
eyes flicker toward you like droplets of water.
April 11, 2025
April 2025 - Matt Rasmussen, it's been a while. 3rd time re-reading this: hunting for familiar lines, still discovering images anew
~~~
2022 - I re-read this book at least once a year to remind myself why I read & write poetry
~~~
2022 - I re-read this book at least once a year to remind myself why I read & write poetry
February 18, 2014
The overriding theme of Black Aperture is the suicide of Rasmussen’s brother. The writing is spare, tight, and gripping; Rasmussen definitely makes every word count. Although the theme is dark, as evidenced in the first word of the title, “Black,” the second word, “Aperture,” shows the reader an opening. This could obviously be the opening of the gun barrel, but it could also be suggestive of the opening of grief toward integration of the event. The word aperture is commonly used in photography, and these poems are indeed snapshots. There are numerous references to openings throughout the book. The first of three poems titled “After Suicide” ends with these lines:
The milk on the floor
reflected the light
then became it.
Floated upward and outward
filling every shadow
blowing the dark open.
The poems are full of imagery-note the strong word “blowing,” suggestive of a bullet blowing a body apart.
In “Aperture,” the speaker tells us that suicide is not something one gets over.
Opposite of closure,
a suicide’s grave
never grows over.
The fact that all but one of these poems utilize couplets seems an obvious metaphor on the duality of brothers. Another image that appears with frequency is that of putting things in the earth. This act of burying things seems to be an attempt to reach the dead brother.
I buried a light bulb
in the garden and a flower
of smoldering filaments
bloomed downward,
toward you.
(Burial)
And look at this wonderful, almost whimsical imagery in “Phone.”
At the foot of your grave
I planted our black phone
wrapped up in its coiled cord.
I’d hoped its ring would
shudder upward and each blade
become a chime, pealing.
And further on:
I wait for the lawn to ring
while the cord sprouts
and a receiver blooms
like a black cucumber.
One of my favorite poems in this powerful collection is titled “Reverse Suicide.” Isn’t this the ultimate fantasy of anybody who has had a loved one die, to have the event reverse itself and things go back as they were? The poem starts
The guy Dad sold your car to
comes back to get his money.
And in the middle of the poem,
Each snowflake stirs before
lifting into the sky as I
learn you won’t be dead.
Every time I read through these poems I find more imagery, and I marvel again at Rasmussen’s careful, considered word choices.
The milk on the floor
reflected the light
then became it.
Floated upward and outward
filling every shadow
blowing the dark open.
The poems are full of imagery-note the strong word “blowing,” suggestive of a bullet blowing a body apart.
In “Aperture,” the speaker tells us that suicide is not something one gets over.
Opposite of closure,
a suicide’s grave
never grows over.
The fact that all but one of these poems utilize couplets seems an obvious metaphor on the duality of brothers. Another image that appears with frequency is that of putting things in the earth. This act of burying things seems to be an attempt to reach the dead brother.
I buried a light bulb
in the garden and a flower
of smoldering filaments
bloomed downward,
toward you.
(Burial)
And look at this wonderful, almost whimsical imagery in “Phone.”
At the foot of your grave
I planted our black phone
wrapped up in its coiled cord.
I’d hoped its ring would
shudder upward and each blade
become a chime, pealing.
And further on:
I wait for the lawn to ring
while the cord sprouts
and a receiver blooms
like a black cucumber.
One of my favorite poems in this powerful collection is titled “Reverse Suicide.” Isn’t this the ultimate fantasy of anybody who has had a loved one die, to have the event reverse itself and things go back as they were? The poem starts
The guy Dad sold your car to
comes back to get his money.
And in the middle of the poem,
Each snowflake stirs before
lifting into the sky as I
learn you won’t be dead.
Every time I read through these poems I find more imagery, and I marvel again at Rasmussen’s careful, considered word choices.
January 16, 2014
Black Aperture lives up to the hype it has garnered. Rasmussen explores his brother's tragic suicide in Faulkner-esque perspective shifts, moving closer and farther with his linguistic lens to the actual event, its aftermath and the moments preceding it. Honestly, Jane Hirshfeld best captures what Rasmussen is about on the back of this book: "the subject here is the suicide of a brother. What cannot be altered remains; yet by changing saying, seeing is also made wider, more openly porous. The liberations of tongue, word, and conception...restore the possibility-sense."
With each poem, Rasmussen moves closer to acceptance and further from understanding. This discursive movement culminates in the penultimate poem, "Reverse Suicide" in which, taking a page out of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five, Rasmussen reverses the film of his brother's suicide; leaves "fall up" to the trees and we're back in a familial Eden. But courageously and perfectly, this reversal can't last. So the collection ends with the wonderful "A Horse Grazes In My Shadow," in which the speaker/Rasmussen prays for both the annihilation and purifying of his self: "I wish the god of this place/would put me in its mouth/until I dissolve, until/the field doesn't end/and I am broken down/like a rifle,/swabbed clean."
Absolutely wonderful.
With each poem, Rasmussen moves closer to acceptance and further from understanding. This discursive movement culminates in the penultimate poem, "Reverse Suicide" in which, taking a page out of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five, Rasmussen reverses the film of his brother's suicide; leaves "fall up" to the trees and we're back in a familial Eden. But courageously and perfectly, this reversal can't last. So the collection ends with the wonderful "A Horse Grazes In My Shadow," in which the speaker/Rasmussen prays for both the annihilation and purifying of his self: "I wish the god of this place/would put me in its mouth/until I dissolve, until/the field doesn't end/and I am broken down/like a rifle,/swabbed clean."
Absolutely wonderful.
September 29, 2013
I picked this up because it was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry in September 2013.
If I know anything about grief, it is that you feel different ways about the same event on different days. It never goes away, but it cycles through different emotions, and you re-remember it in ways that are stark and new and awful. This entire volume feels that way, with several poems sharing the same name: "After Suicide." Many of these work through the poet's experiences with his brother's suicide, spanning from ridiculous fantasy (replugging a hole in the brain) to incredible loss and abandonment.
Not easy to read, but powerful.
If I know anything about grief, it is that you feel different ways about the same event on different days. It never goes away, but it cycles through different emotions, and you re-remember it in ways that are stark and new and awful. This entire volume feels that way, with several poems sharing the same name: "After Suicide." Many of these work through the poet's experiences with his brother's suicide, spanning from ridiculous fantasy (replugging a hole in the brain) to incredible loss and abandonment.
Not easy to read, but powerful.
September 4, 2013
The poems look at his brother's suicide in different ways, through rather surreal imagery. The verse is competent, but nothing took away my breath. At the end of the book, I am left with the rather banal thought, what will he write about next? That is a problem, I think, with books that are too narrowly thematic. And isn't calling oneself "Matt" rather too chummy? I am reminded of a Facebook post by an editor who complained of emails from strangers addressing him by his first name.
December 31, 2014
I'm normally not much of a poetry reader. I just don't get that much out of it. I read this as part of the GCAC-2014 challenge. This small volume of poetry is dark, disturbing, bitter, and angry. It all revolves around the suicide of the poet's brother. Very moving and a little depressing.
June 1, 2025
This is so haunting and feels so very raw and real. If you’re not into poetry (and I’m usually not either) I would still recommend you read this collection, in particular „Reverse Suicide“.
August 15, 2015
Solid work on mourning, light, darkness, memory.
Read
August 2, 20242024 Sealey Challenge Day 2:
Extra points from me for writing a God diss track (“And God Said,”). There’s a cyclical gloom and sense of disproportionately long and wide nighttime looming over the book, such that many of its poems need the context of Minnesota’s sunless geography to work — and they do. Plenty to unpack about his couplets re: content/form recapitulating, line breaks as exit wounds, lines as trajectories, etc. I usually think that, as a poet, either the name of your God is Craft or the name of your God is Passion: perhaps like Matthew saying “you cannot serve two masters,” it’s difficult to publish (but not necessarily write) something “clean” that also still has a soul, surprise, spontaneity, and consequential perspectives in equal measure, yet Rasmussen pulls that off again and again in here. The poems are sharp, neat, and airy, but not vacant — elegantly haunting, and also, about something. And when the hollowness is there, it’s deliberate and in service of the collection’s tone/mood. (As he tells us, “A hole is nothing / but what remains around it.”) Like a cohesive album made almost exclusively of album tracks (complimentary), glossy and fused together into one tonally homogeneous body (not like plastic wrap, but like obsidian). Thinking of Ada Limón’s “It is night now. And the owl never comes, only more of night and what repeats in the night.” and Louise’s “Tell me, he added, / what do you think of your own work? / Not enough night, I answered.”
Extra points from me for writing a God diss track (“And God Said,”). There’s a cyclical gloom and sense of disproportionately long and wide nighttime looming over the book, such that many of its poems need the context of Minnesota’s sunless geography to work — and they do. Plenty to unpack about his couplets re: content/form recapitulating, line breaks as exit wounds, lines as trajectories, etc. I usually think that, as a poet, either the name of your God is Craft or the name of your God is Passion: perhaps like Matthew saying “you cannot serve two masters,” it’s difficult to publish (but not necessarily write) something “clean” that also still has a soul, surprise, spontaneity, and consequential perspectives in equal measure, yet Rasmussen pulls that off again and again in here. The poems are sharp, neat, and airy, but not vacant — elegantly haunting, and also, about something. And when the hollowness is there, it’s deliberate and in service of the collection’s tone/mood. (As he tells us, “A hole is nothing / but what remains around it.”) Like a cohesive album made almost exclusively of album tracks (complimentary), glossy and fused together into one tonally homogeneous body (not like plastic wrap, but like obsidian). Thinking of Ada Limón’s “It is night now. And the owl never comes, only more of night and what repeats in the night.” and Louise’s “Tell me, he added, / what do you think of your own work? / Not enough night, I answered.”
April 30, 2018
As noted in many other reviews, the majority of the poems in this collection contain meditations on the suicide of the poet's brother, which makes me glad that I read it on a sunny day, long before retiring to bed. These are hard poems, but Rasmussen doesn't bludgeon the reader. They are spare and concise, with accessible images: "At the base/ of each bare tree/ someone has spilled/ a bucket of shadow." "The bus brakes squeal/ like a mouse pinned/ under a microphone." I felt winded after finishing the collection.
January 10, 2018
Powerful and mesmerizing collection by Rasmussen. How suicide can rupture everywhere.
X
"The mystery
begins like this:
We are more likely
to kill ourselves
than be killed
by someone else.
I am the pistol
saying, I will only
say this once.
Do not open
the tiny door
in the back
of your head.
All alone when
all alone, we
are asleep
inside our
murderer. There's
a metal word
in the chamber
of my mouth
and my eyes
are bored out.
I'm a noose
using the body
against itself.
I see
what's too awful
to be true–
that house
with its one lit window,
my brother's
punctured skull–
yet is."
X
"The mystery
begins like this:
We are more likely
to kill ourselves
than be killed
by someone else.
I am the pistol
saying, I will only
say this once.
Do not open
the tiny door
in the back
of your head.
All alone when
all alone, we
are asleep
inside our
murderer. There's
a metal word
in the chamber
of my mouth
and my eyes
are bored out.
I'm a noose
using the body
against itself.
I see
what's too awful
to be true–
that house
with its one lit window,
my brother's
punctured skull–
yet is."
March 15, 2024
"Destructive and redemptive, Black Aperture opens to the complicated entanglements of mourning: damage and healing, sorrow and laughter, and torment balanced with moments of relief."
I stole that statement from the blurb for the simple reason that it resonated with my experience of this collection. I wouldn't say that the poetry is profound, nor does it knock one's socks off. However, Rasmussen manages what poetry so often fails at in the pursuit of beauty, his work is approachable and relatable - even to the average person who is neither a poetry aficionado, nor has dealt with the tragedy of a sibling's suicide. As such, "Black Aperture" is well worthy of a read.
Recommended!
I stole that statement from the blurb for the simple reason that it resonated with my experience of this collection. I wouldn't say that the poetry is profound, nor does it knock one's socks off. However, Rasmussen manages what poetry so often fails at in the pursuit of beauty, his work is approachable and relatable - even to the average person who is neither a poetry aficionado, nor has dealt with the tragedy of a sibling's suicide. As such, "Black Aperture" is well worthy of a read.
Recommended!
August 6, 2019
A melancholy collection of poetry. Unsurprising, considering the subject matter. Amazing visual language, struck my imagination such that I found myself seeing exactly what he described in terrifying detail. He has a way of spinning sad or menial events into a fantastical metaphor, which I found engaging. Worth the fairly quick read
February 10, 2018
I was able to relate/connect to many poems in this collection.
April 27, 2021
I just could not get drawn in. I found myself rushing through it because I’m a no book left unfinished type of gal.
August 27, 2023
need to read again (in a good way). there is so much packed into such brief lines. these poems changed the way i see the world
October 11, 2025
3.7 ⭐ Really incredible collection. Rasmussen is able to say a lot in a few words. A lesson in concision.
July 30, 2021
Utterly beautiful. Every single poem.
July 17, 2018
Amazing, almost surreal, poems addressing a brother's suicide. Light exists in the most interesting instances.
Thanks, Megan for introducing me to this one.
Thanks, Megan for introducing me to this one.
July 7, 2013
Poems suffused with the agony and redemptive responses to death
Few poets have been able to respond to the devastation of death of a loved one with the power and the variations of feelings as young newcomer Matt Rasmussen. His poems are skeletal in his use of so few words laid out in a spare, lucid manner, yet the emotions he conveys are so palpably real that they at first startle and shock and then on re-reading them answer so many questions we al have about the grieving process. His line between surreal and real is a thin thread that requires careful deciphering to arrive at eh origin of though that initiated each poem. While we know these are responses to the tragic suicide death of his brother, there is so much more to them than eulogies.
TOM BLACK
pushed me into my locker
right after I found out
my brother had killed himself.
He didn't know yet.
A few years later,
a winter dusk in the field
behind our high school:
he, too, pushed a cold trigger.
The next night I walked
through snow to where
the northern lights
fell over the dead field.
The sky crackled in blue ash
above the police ribbon
strung around some stakes.
His sprawled imprint
had melted a little.
It looked like his life
had fallen asleep.
On the white plate
my flashlight made
on the snowfield, the blood
flickered. I turned
my light off and cried.
OUTGOING
Our answering machine still played your message,
and on the day you died Dad asked me to replace it.
I was chosen to save us the shame of dead you
answering calls `Hello, I have just shot myself.
To leave a message for me, call hell.' The clear cassette
lay inside the white machine like a tiny patient
being monitored or a miniature glass briefcase
protecting the scroll of lost voices. Everything barely
mattered and then no longer did/ I pressed record
and laid my voice over yours, muting it forever
and even now, `I'm sorry we are not here,' I began.
Poetry of this power from a young mind signals the arrival of one of our next major poets. This writing is extraordinarily fine. Grady Harp, July 13
Few poets have been able to respond to the devastation of death of a loved one with the power and the variations of feelings as young newcomer Matt Rasmussen. His poems are skeletal in his use of so few words laid out in a spare, lucid manner, yet the emotions he conveys are so palpably real that they at first startle and shock and then on re-reading them answer so many questions we al have about the grieving process. His line between surreal and real is a thin thread that requires careful deciphering to arrive at eh origin of though that initiated each poem. While we know these are responses to the tragic suicide death of his brother, there is so much more to them than eulogies.
TOM BLACK
pushed me into my locker
right after I found out
my brother had killed himself.
He didn't know yet.
A few years later,
a winter dusk in the field
behind our high school:
he, too, pushed a cold trigger.
The next night I walked
through snow to where
the northern lights
fell over the dead field.
The sky crackled in blue ash
above the police ribbon
strung around some stakes.
His sprawled imprint
had melted a little.
It looked like his life
had fallen asleep.
On the white plate
my flashlight made
on the snowfield, the blood
flickered. I turned
my light off and cried.
OUTGOING
Our answering machine still played your message,
and on the day you died Dad asked me to replace it.
I was chosen to save us the shame of dead you
answering calls `Hello, I have just shot myself.
To leave a message for me, call hell.' The clear cassette
lay inside the white machine like a tiny patient
being monitored or a miniature glass briefcase
protecting the scroll of lost voices. Everything barely
mattered and then no longer did/ I pressed record
and laid my voice over yours, muting it forever
and even now, `I'm sorry we are not here,' I began.
Poetry of this power from a young mind signals the arrival of one of our next major poets. This writing is extraordinarily fine. Grady Harp, July 13
January 20, 2014
'Black Aperture' is a stunning dissertation in almost complete form about the wholly human sense of absence: Rasmussen tackles the idea of loss from every avenue, and in doing so, gives a view into the own black chasm of a longing that either is, or is missing, in his own heart.
What sets Rasmussen's poems apart from simple elegy's or meditations on loss is their refusal to reach for the reltable or expected sense of longing for resolution. Everything he paints is a near incomplete picture, or the act of a tragedy in motion. From 'Elegy In X Parts (Poem 13)':
The revelation isn't revealed. The crux of understanding still floats like a flake falling from a white sky in the distance. And, as a result, we're given the same sense of loss that Rasmussen must have felt in the scene he regales us with. The reality of the experience is tangible, instead of idealized, and as a result, all the more powerful.
My only systematic critique of this collection is Rasmussen's sometimes-tendency to use overly oblique similes, and to use them a little too often. The novelty and simplicity of his poems are striking in their own right, but the stretches for comparison sometimes rob the poems of their compact quality.
Overall, a stirring collection of moments reflective of the yawning ache felt in all of us to different degrees.
What sets Rasmussen's poems apart from simple elegy's or meditations on loss is their refusal to reach for the reltable or expected sense of longing for resolution. Everything he paints is a near incomplete picture, or the act of a tragedy in motion. From 'Elegy In X Parts (Poem 13)':
"All Night, snow fell
like ash through a glass of water.
Everyone's lawns sleep
under a large empty page.
On the way to the funeral home
I could feel your note
folded into my shirt pocket,
cupping my chest like a passport
from a country wiped
off the world. When we stop
to get gas I look at my hands.
I'm wearing your gloves.
Dad, alone in the cold
outside, waits for the tank
to fill. Across the street,
kids build a man out of snow."
The revelation isn't revealed. The crux of understanding still floats like a flake falling from a white sky in the distance. And, as a result, we're given the same sense of loss that Rasmussen must have felt in the scene he regales us with. The reality of the experience is tangible, instead of idealized, and as a result, all the more powerful.
My only systematic critique of this collection is Rasmussen's sometimes-tendency to use overly oblique similes, and to use them a little too often. The novelty and simplicity of his poems are striking in their own right, but the stretches for comparison sometimes rob the poems of their compact quality.
Overall, a stirring collection of moments reflective of the yawning ache felt in all of us to different degrees.
March 16, 2014
(3/16/14: I changed my rating to 4 stars. I don't know why I was so ungenerous last week. This is a good book. Here's what I originally wrote.)
3.5 stars
Rasmussen writes his way through his brother's long-past suicide in this much-celebrated first book of poems. The best pieces, for me, are those that address the suicide--or the brother--directly. Rasmussen captures the shock, the grief, and the black humor jumbled up in the aftermath of this violent death, and he doesn't smother the questions it leaves behind with answers. Perhaps my favorite is the last of the thirteen poems in the central section, "Elegy in X Parts," all of which are titled "X":
All night, snow fell
like ash through a glass of water.
Everyone's lawns sleep
under a large empty page.
On the way to the funeral home
I could feel your note
folded into my shirt pocket,
cupping my chest like a passport
from a country wiped
off the world. When we stop
to get gas I look at my hands.
I'm wearing your gloves.
Dad, alone in the cold
outside, waits for the tank
to fill. Across the street,
kids build a man out of snow.
As another reviewer commmented, Rasmussen knows how to break a line, and does so flawlessly here.
Yet as much as I liked individual poems and turns of phrase, the collection as a whole doesn't quite cohere. Images of ash, snow, and hands echo throughout the book (as do fields, leaves, birds, sun and moon), often with great power, but they don't quite pull the reader through to the resoluation the narrator claims at the end ("I have come to terms/with my brother's suicide."). That's all right, though: it is, after all, a first book, and I can't wait to see what Rasmussen writes next.
3.5 stars
Rasmussen writes his way through his brother's long-past suicide in this much-celebrated first book of poems. The best pieces, for me, are those that address the suicide--or the brother--directly. Rasmussen captures the shock, the grief, and the black humor jumbled up in the aftermath of this violent death, and he doesn't smother the questions it leaves behind with answers. Perhaps my favorite is the last of the thirteen poems in the central section, "Elegy in X Parts," all of which are titled "X":
All night, snow fell
like ash through a glass of water.
Everyone's lawns sleep
under a large empty page.
On the way to the funeral home
I could feel your note
folded into my shirt pocket,
cupping my chest like a passport
from a country wiped
off the world. When we stop
to get gas I look at my hands.
I'm wearing your gloves.
Dad, alone in the cold
outside, waits for the tank
to fill. Across the street,
kids build a man out of snow.
As another reviewer commmented, Rasmussen knows how to break a line, and does so flawlessly here.
Yet as much as I liked individual poems and turns of phrase, the collection as a whole doesn't quite cohere. Images of ash, snow, and hands echo throughout the book (as do fields, leaves, birds, sun and moon), often with great power, but they don't quite pull the reader through to the resoluation the narrator claims at the end ("I have come to terms/with my brother's suicide."). That's all right, though: it is, after all, a first book, and I can't wait to see what Rasmussen writes next.
May 19, 2022
I was lent this book with the promise that it would alleviate the MOHs (Moments of of Hopelessness) of studying for board exams. And it did its job, despite being the most incredibly sad collection! I had a hard time picking a poem for this review, as so many of the pieces -- punctuated and pierced by the suicide of Rasmussen's brother -- are perfectly crafted. There are a few poems that are firmly surreal, but I think the strongest pieces in Black Aperture are rooted in narrative and literal setting and then move into some other space. Like this poem, the first in the collection:
Trajectory
After spiraling twice
it exits the barrel,
the spent day exposing
a flame that propels it.
The bullet, spinning
to maintain a shallow arc,
carves a hot thread
through the wind
until it breaks one hair
and the deer's neck
splashes open.
Before the heart beats
the bullet unfolds
a plowing lead point
then again is in flight
wobbling from its passage
through the deer.
Its peeled-back body
comes to rest in the soft trunk
of a poplar to stick out
like a button. When I press it
all the leaves fall.
Reread in 2022: still perfect.
Trajectory
After spiraling twice
it exits the barrel,
the spent day exposing
a flame that propels it.
The bullet, spinning
to maintain a shallow arc,
carves a hot thread
through the wind
until it breaks one hair
and the deer's neck
splashes open.
Before the heart beats
the bullet unfolds
a plowing lead point
then again is in flight
wobbling from its passage
through the deer.
Its peeled-back body
comes to rest in the soft trunk
of a poplar to stick out
like a button. When I press it
all the leaves fall.
Reread in 2022: still perfect.
December 31, 2014
Heartbreaking and true, Black Aperture is a collection of mostly previously published poems by Matt Rasmussen that explore the fundamental meaning, processing, relationship with, and interpretation of death. The speaker of many of the poems is a young, albeit ironically mature man who is examining the role that death has played in his life in one very shocking and terrible example
The images in this book are illuminating, unique, shocking, and grotesque, but all capture the morbid fascination with an event that is so troublingly important to the speaker. Both the years and family struggle with the weight of these events, and the short stanzas, ellipses, confusion, and visuality of these pieces are all combined to create a fascinating empathy and brilliantly horrible visualization of the speaker’s pain.
A beautiful and troubling collection, bringing the reader’s heart into the darkest corners of despair.
The images in this book are illuminating, unique, shocking, and grotesque, but all capture the morbid fascination with an event that is so troublingly important to the speaker. Both the years and family struggle with the weight of these events, and the short stanzas, ellipses, confusion, and visuality of these pieces are all combined to create a fascinating empathy and brilliantly horrible visualization of the speaker’s pain.
A beautiful and troubling collection, bringing the reader’s heart into the darkest corners of despair.
May 6, 2014
from Black Aperture by Matt Rasmussen:
Phone
At the foot of your grave
I planted our black phone
wrapped up in its coiled cord.
I'd hoped its ring would
shudder upward and each blade
of grass become a chime, pealing.
But together we decide
which way the dream goes
like spilled water on a table
we carry across the room.
I wait for the lawn to ring
while the cord sprouts
and a receiver blooms
like a black cucumber.
No one is calling so
I put it to my ear
expecting the steady
dial tone of your voice
but hear only the dark
breathing of the dirt.
Phone
At the foot of your grave
I planted our black phone
wrapped up in its coiled cord.
I'd hoped its ring would
shudder upward and each blade
of grass become a chime, pealing.
But together we decide
which way the dream goes
like spilled water on a table
we carry across the room.
I wait for the lawn to ring
while the cord sprouts
and a receiver blooms
like a black cucumber.
No one is calling so
I put it to my ear
expecting the steady
dial tone of your voice
but hear only the dark
breathing of the dirt.
September 20, 2025
A deeply moving book of poems on grief, loss, and suicide. This book won the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and was longlisted for the National Book Award for poetry.
From one of my favorite poems, called "X":
"We are more likely
to kill ourselves
than be killed
by someone else.
I am the pistol
saying, I will only
say this once.
Do not open
the tiny door
in the back
of your head."
From one of my favorite poems, called "X":
"We are more likely
to kill ourselves
than be killed
by someone else.
I am the pistol
saying, I will only
say this once.
Do not open
the tiny door
in the back
of your head."
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