Out of Bounds

by Harry Mathews

Poetry. Letterpress, 2 colors, saddlestitched. A wonderfully inventive, formally bold long poem from the author of Cigarettes and The Sinking of the Odyadek Stadion. Formal experimentation reaches into the past and seizes conceits, forms and rhythms from the history of poetry, appropriating with a free hand a range of language seldom used by contemporary poets. Yet the poem is absolutely contemporary, especially in its license in pillaging the rich past to furbish the poet's vivid present. "Long renowned for his masterful and duplicitous fiction, Harry Mathews the poet has been little known until now, making this important and long-overdue collection all the more welcome. His poetry is both bizarre and deeply moving"--John Ashbery.

20 pages, chapbook

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Harry Mathews was an American author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays.

Together with John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch, Mathews founded and edited the short-lived but influential literary journal Locus Solus (named after a novel by Raymond Roussel, one of Mathews's chief early influences) from 1961 to 1962.

Harry Mathews was the first American chosen for membership in the French literary society known as the Oulipo, which is dedicated to exploring new possibilities in literature, in particular through the use of various constraints and algorithms. The late French writer Georges Perec, likewise a member, was a good friend, and the two translated some of each other's writings. Mathews considers many of his works to be Oulipian in nature, but even before he encountered the society he was working in a parallel direction.

Mathews was married to the writer Marie Chaix and divided his time between Paris, Key West, and New York.