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To Keep Time
Joseph Massey's third collection, To Keep Time, limns the microclimate of coastal Humboldt County, California. These poems live where modern life--radio static, a space heater, traffic--collides with the so-called natural world. With spare, vivid imagery, Massey builds brilliantly on concerns familiar to readers of his earlier works. Here "The near-silence / rattles me // to attention;" here the vagaries of language itself--what's been left out as much as what's been written in--penetrate the heart of these stealthy, aching poems. To Keep Time stops the world's chatter for a moment and listens to its loneliness and longing, and hears the grace in the relentlessness of days.
- GenresPoetry
92 pages, Paperback
First published October 7, 2014
2 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Joseph Massey
32 books78 followersJoseph Massey is the author of A New Silence (forthcoming from Shearsman Books), Illocality (Wave Books, 2015) and a trilogy grounded in the landscape of coastal Humboldt County, California: Areas of Fog (Shearsman Books, 2009), At the Point (Shearsman Books, 2011), and To Keep Time (Omnidawn, 2014).
His chapbooks include Minima St. (Range, 2003), Eureka Slough (Effing Press, 2005), Bramble (Hot Whiskey, 2005), Property Line (Fewer & Further, 2006), Out of Light (Kitchen Press, 2008), Within Hours (Fault Line Press, 2008), The Lack Of (Nasturtium Press, 2009), Exit North (Book Thug, 2010), Thaw Compass (Press Board Press, 2014), An Interim (Tungsten Press, 2014), What Follows (Ornithopter Press, 2015), Present Conditions (Hollyridge Press) and 5 Poems (Tungsten Press, 2018).
His work has appeared in many journals and magazines, including The Nation, A Public Space, American Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, Verse, GeoHumanities, Talisman, and in
anthologies: Visiting Dr. Williams: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of William Carlos Williams (University of Iowa Press, 2011), Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking Penguin, 2015), The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them (Belknap Press, 2016), and Renga for Obama (Harvard University Press, 2018).
He worked as an instructor and teaching assistant for the University of Pennsylvania’s ModPo (Modern and Contemporary Poetry) MOOC, which serves thousands of students, worldwide, at no cost. He now teaches privately.
He lives in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.
His chapbooks include Minima St. (Range, 2003), Eureka Slough (Effing Press, 2005), Bramble (Hot Whiskey, 2005), Property Line (Fewer & Further, 2006), Out of Light (Kitchen Press, 2008), Within Hours (Fault Line Press, 2008), The Lack Of (Nasturtium Press, 2009), Exit North (Book Thug, 2010), Thaw Compass (Press Board Press, 2014), An Interim (Tungsten Press, 2014), What Follows (Ornithopter Press, 2015), Present Conditions (Hollyridge Press) and 5 Poems (Tungsten Press, 2018).
His work has appeared in many journals and magazines, including The Nation, A Public Space, American Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, Verse, GeoHumanities, Talisman, and in
anthologies: Visiting Dr. Williams: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of William Carlos Williams (University of Iowa Press, 2011), Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking Penguin, 2015), The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them (Belknap Press, 2016), and Renga for Obama (Harvard University Press, 2018).
He worked as an instructor and teaching assistant for the University of Pennsylvania’s ModPo (Modern and Contemporary Poetry) MOOC, which serves thousands of students, worldwide, at no cost. He now teaches privately.
He lives in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 20, 2019
Struggled to rate this: 3.6ish stars!
Writing: 4 stars!
Abstract words coming together to make something, things that make sense, oftentimes things that do not. A world that feels so full of emotion that I have grasped before, but sometimes is out of reach. Joseph Massey's writing feels fresh and new, the way that he puts words together is brilliant and startling. In these small, concise works of art, the poems leap off of the page and the reader envisions them right in their mind. At times, I was hit with a feeling of being understood or felt something from Joseph Massey's words that was powerful and real. Just because the words did not get through to me at times or were too abstract to understand does not mean that this collection is bad or that Joseph does not know how to write. His style is unique, he has a vivid way with words, able to balance the abstract with the real. Some of his endings will stay with me for a long time.
Writing: 4 stars!
Abstract words coming together to make something, things that make sense, oftentimes things that do not. A world that feels so full of emotion that I have grasped before, but sometimes is out of reach. Joseph Massey's writing feels fresh and new, the way that he puts words together is brilliant and startling. In these small, concise works of art, the poems leap off of the page and the reader envisions them right in their mind. At times, I was hit with a feeling of being understood or felt something from Joseph Massey's words that was powerful and real. Just because the words did not get through to me at times or were too abstract to understand does not mean that this collection is bad or that Joseph does not know how to write. His style is unique, he has a vivid way with words, able to balance the abstract with the real. Some of his endings will stay with me for a long time.
October 5, 2014
In this collection Joseph Massey constructs some of the quietest and most appropriate excuses for ecstasy. Get it and read it.
January 7, 2015
Poems that see light as clearly and concretely as they do objects in the field and force of nature. Precise, spare, and crystalline moments.
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November 19, 2014This book is about waking up kind of drunk in Massachusetts and walking around in the cold. Foggy brains grasping at fog and missing. Showing you what its like to miss. Occasionally kicking some wet sticks and revealing a gem. Mostly wet stick kicking, though.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews