Modern Life

by Matthea Harvey

Matthea Harvey's Modern Life introduces a new voice that tries to exist in the gray area between good and evil, love and hate. In the central sequences, "The Future of Terror" and "The Terror of the Future," Harvey imagines citizens and soldiers at the end of their wits at the impending end of the world. Her prose pieces and lyrics examine the divided, halved self in poems about centaurs, ship figureheads, and a robot boy. Throughout, Harvey's signature wit and concision show us the double-sided nature of reality, of what we see and what we know.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Contemporary, College

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2007

About the author

Matthea Harvey is the author of three books of poetry--Modern Life, Sad Little Breathing Machine and Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form, and one children's book, The Little General and the Giant Snowflake. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence and lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

these are poems that even a non-poetry lover can appreciate. most of them read like little bite-sized prose pieces with accessible imagery and just enough quirk to get my attention. i seem to have a knack for subconsciously selecting things to read that are somehow similar in tone and vibe, because it was a really great follow-up to the littlest hitler. yay, me!

come to my blog!

[Juliet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, this book fluctuated between two stars and three and one half stars for me.

One more pro: a few of the poems at the end made me envision rather quirkily charming Amelie-esque scenes.

One more con: What kind of a poem is this?

YOU HAVE MY EYES

Give them back.

(And that's the entire poem. Seriously, what the heck is that? It's silly, stupid, and annoying.)

*************************************************************
I am still not quite finshed with this book, but after reading more of it, I have changed my rating from 2 stars up to 3 stars and have a few more thoughts on the matter:

My feelings about the content of this book fluctuate a lot as I read along, but they're little fluctuations not extreme fluctations. They're more like indecision than mood swings. (And obviously, I do understand that many of my feelings are rooted in aesthetic subjectivity and personal bias.)

At times, I find it rather quirkily charming.

At other times, I find it rather flatly clever.

Like a quirky crossword puzzle.

And I don't really like crossword puzzles--not even quirky ones--in my mind, crossword puzzles exist in a completely different realm than poetry.

One very good aspect to this book is that it tends to be very specifically imaginative--and so even if some of the particular imaginings fall flat for me personally, I have to give it credit for not being generic.

Overall, it is still falling a little more on the miss side rather than the hit side for me personally, but it's at the very least a semi-interesting read and seems to be kind of growing on me, so maybe I should give it another chance and read it again after I finish reading it for the first time.

**********************************************************

Only 2 stars so far, although I feel moderately optimisitic that my review may improve as I read more, but here's the thing:

I'm currently in the midst of reading her sequence of poems 'The Future of Terror' and I don't understand why she is working through the alphabet chronologically within each of these poems.

Each of these poems starts with multiple words that begin with the letter 'g' and ends with multiple words that begin with the letter 's' and in between are multiple words that start with the other alphabetically chornological letters--and why?

Mind you, I am certainly not anti-experimental when it comes to poetry, but I guess I would like the experiment to mean something or do something or...something.

But this particular experiment does not convey anything to me except that I can't help but to be overly aware of it while reading these poems, which distracts me from other details of the poems and makes me feel as if I'm reading the published results of some sort of annoying writing excercise (i.e. I could understand self-conducting some sort of writing excercise in which ones forces herself to use a bunch of g words and then a bunch of h words and then a bunch of i words etc..., in order to possibly generate some unexpected and potentially interesting results, but I don't necessarily want to read the results of that excercise with the words still in order). Maybe I'm missing something.

I remember having some similar reactions to some of the techniques used in Harvey's first collection--techniques that seemed experimental for experiment's sake, but without achieving much greater effect (which just serves to make the experiment seem relatively pointless to me).

But then I quite liked much of her second collection.

So I'm hoping once I get past this 'The Future of Terror' sequence, I will encounter something that strikes me as more impressive and/or resonant, but we shall see.

So far it's distracting and eh.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard Matthea Harvey read at Open Books last night. She was disarmingly down-to-earth: charming & funny, & her reading kicked ass! This book is likely her best yet, from what I've heard/read so far. There is something for everyone in here: prose poems, strange lyric poems, grotesque animal poems ("Dinna'Pig"!) and flower petals like "little meat sunsets".

[Ryo Yamaguchi · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a bit of a rush, but I want to get this quick review off to you. Modern Life is the third in Harvey's collections of poems and is most notable for the two sections, "The Future of Terror," and "The Terror of the Future," which anchor the book like two firm columns running through this seven sectioned collection. Please pick up a copy at Graywolf. Like much of Harvey's work, the book as a whole is extremely organized, with a parallel section structure that runs roughly like this:

Intro
The Future of Terror
Art section I
Robo-boy section
Art section II
The Terror of the Future
Closing

Poems in the TofF and FofT sections follow a similar rigid organization, as Harvey describes in the notes: "the poems "The Future of Terror" and "Terror of the Future" were inspired by making lists of the words in the dictionary between "future" and "terror." They are not strict abecedarian poems because they are not acrostics, but they do mimic the abecedarius's alphabetical footsteps. The words "future" and "terror" act like "A" and "B"--they were the markers that mattered." And one feels this alphabetical counting strongly, moving forward in the TofF section and backward in the FofT, which has this cumulative, somewhat bewildering effect on the reader's sense of time, especially as we seem both in some imagined future and some imagined present. This is the core strength of the collection, I believe, in that Harvey seems to accomplish what so much science fiction cannot, by bringing her strange universe and her strange futurism to a very private level in the reader. No doubt, Harvey is characteristically challenging, colorful, and witty, and any reader thinking this collection to be a critique of the War on Terror is right only insofar as Miami is representative of America (thanks Jay!). TofF speaks, mostly, from a soldier's point of view, and FofT speaks, mostly, from a citizen-in-maybe-post-apocalyptic-world point of view (what better place than these parentheses to mention that the sense of apocalypse in this collection is very sophisticated--perhaps, that it's not even post-apocalyptic or dystopian, but some caffeine-addled dream of the mucus-drenched entanglement of the two). Here's a taste of The Future of Terror, from "The Future of Terror / 3," which has my favorite image in the collection, though I will not get to it below (why not here: "Periodically, we started projects: one man / made dents in the shape of stars on the inside / of his P.O. Box with a Phillips head screwdriver."):

[...:]
Our protestations sounded like herons
on the hi fi. Even armed with invoices,
it's human nature to proceed inch-meal.
We were a sad jumble of journeymen and here's
the kicker: a few of us had never been love.

And here from "Terror of the Future / 9"

The teacups tied to strings along the walkway
stayed silent, had no warning songs to sing.
We shook talc onto our tastebuds
and watched the skyrockets, starry-eyed,
until night blacked them out like a giant
malevolent Sharpie.

While the projects of these two sections provide the most ostensible place to go for meaning, they are not in fact what I most enjoy about this collection. Like many things, I think there are many great moments in these poems, but too often I feel the form a bit clumsy, and while I like stepping alphabetically up and down the aforementioned feeling this evokes, I prefer Harvey when she is a bit freer to design her poems according to image. Which, let me mention, Harvey is a design poet, something I like to fancy I am. I don't mean she's a formalist by any means, but time and time the meaning I get out of her work is a direct result of the way she designs things, her counterpoints, juxtapositions, transfigurations, etc., and, if you would be so kind as to remind me next week, I'd like to get into this idea more thoroughly: poetry as design (as opposed to poetry as testament).

The geometrically true center of this collection is in the Robo-boy poems, and as the blurbs on Graywolf's site suggest, this is very involved in this sense of fragmentation, of being in-half, a monster, half-human half something else, missing something, etc. Robo-boy, by the thorough involvement by the poet in hashing out several poems on him, develops the strongest sense of character, and in this way is perhaps the lightest reading of the book in the clarity of concern the poems have. He's somewhat hapless and pitiful, but loveable and very relatable in pretty standard ways--we all feel his sense of estrangement, his robot-among-humans confusions. But by no means are these feelings limited to this group of poems. Rather, they are extremely pervasive throughout the collection and, I think, the strongest meaning in the book, our collective contemporary state of estrangement, both from the governing principles of our societies and institutions, and, sadly, from each other. Hence the title Modern Life and not Future Life.

Harvey has a great accomplishment regarding this latter notion, in that, throughout the remaining prose poems, she is able to write pieces playfully surreal, creating what feel almost like installations on the page, and others that are much more deeply personal, direct addresses, matters of romance, perhaps, or certainly intimate human connections, which are especially prevalent in the closing section, whose emotional tenor is satisfyingly amped. The variation makes for peppy reading.

Let me close this by giving two examples of the prose poems, the first being this kind of "installation" poem, and the latter being this more intimate one. From "Waitressing in the Room with a Thousand Moons:"

~

The moons desperately want to circle something, so when a dish comes out, they dive-bomb it, bump into each other and a dusting of moon-rock falls into the food. They know the plate won't be a planet. We've been here for centuries and not once has a planet come in. I guess they do it just-in-case. Having lived most of their lives too close to everything, their sense of perspective is poor.

~

And, "You Know This Too," in entirety:

~

You Know This Too

The bird on the gate and the goat nosing the grass below make a funny little fraction, thinks the centaur. He wonders if this thought is more human than horse, more poetry than prose. Sometimes it's hard not to abandon the whole rigmarole of standing at the counter--using a knife and fork to politely eat his steak and peas--to go outside and put his head in the grass. But what his stomach wants, his tongue won't touch; what his mouth wants, his stomach recoils from. Through the restaurant window he sees flashes of silver and pink in the river. It's so clogged with mermaids and mermen, there's no room for fish. And under the bridge, a group of extremist griffins, intent on their graffitti--Long Live the Berlin... The spray paint runs out and while they're shaking the next can in their clenched claws, the centaur spells out Wall on his napkin, and sketches next to it a girl in sequins getting sawed in half.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Matthea Harvey, during her reading on September 16, stated that her new collection of poetry, Modern Life, dealt with the notion of halving. This trope of halves is well-established in the book's imagery, as centaurs, the Berlin Wall, a half-robot/half-boy, and other halves and halving mechanisms appear intermittently. These halves contribute to her book's rhythm, as well as its proportions and sense of space. The blank pages diving the book into sections seemed to pose questions concerning each section's autonomy: is the book itself an addition of fractions? Are the short poems fractions of the larger prose block? Are halves adequate, and if not, what are they lacking? "Halve" could also function as a simple pun, or "have." As I read the book, I sensed a undercurrent of yearning and longing that seeped up in at different points throughout the book. Many of Harvey's characters don't want to be halves, but their individual longings to have certain things help to provide the collection with an intimate sense of tension.

A restrictive form, such as the loose abecedarian patterning in Harvey's future/terror sequences, illuminates the poet's compositional freedom within a given set of parameters while exposing the poet's concurrent desire for unbounded creative expression. Harvey's future/terror poems are narrated by two discrete speakers - one military, one civilian - meaning that not only is the poetic form constrained, but the speakers' assumed personalities are occupationally bound. A soldier may not reveal a war's explicit details, while these very details are unaccessible from the civilian realm, and so forth.

Through all these formal restraints, each of Harvey's narratives achieves great movement. For example, the poem "Terror of the Future / 5" begins, "Technically, 'lonely me' was a tautology. / No one had ever stuffed carnations / in my tailpipe or planted a symbolic / lipsticked kiss on the swingdoor / to my kitchen" (65). Harvey's 21 future/terror poems are themselves something of a tautology, lending this particular piece to the book's meta-narrative. The future/terror poems topically confront our nation's war in Iraq, and mimic the obsessive recycling of stale war rhetoric, but they also speak to an emotional longing amplified in the book's trope of halves, such as being a single half in a relationship. Abecedarian, aside from meaning "arranged alphabetically," also gestures towards something rudimentary or elementary. The civilian is disconnected from the soldier, craving carnations, or a spike in banal domesticity. The personality of the soldier, physically separated by the book's midsection, is lost in the mindless repetition of soldierly life. Words are the sole passage between Harvey's characters, and a rudimentary source of human contact.

Modern Life is wonderfully arranged, utilizing the medium of the book as an amendment to the narrative. The harmony amongst black humor, sound values, poetic form, and other craft elements helps to refresh the somewhat clichéd notion of "modern life." Harvey's book illuminates the precarious world we live in, with its rampant commodification, arbitrary class distinctions, ambivalent peoples, and the sort. Harvey's satire, as a rhetorical strategy, absolves the text from didacticism and presents a fresh critique on the contemporary world.

[D'Argo Agathon · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I did not hate Pity the Bathtub... as much as others in my workshop, I did find its density frustrating. Two things have helped to alleviate that pressure put on me as a reader: one, hearing and seeing Harvey read her own poetry, and two, reading the more practiced and loose poetry of Modern Life. For the former – I was surprised at how calmly, reflectively, and cleanly the poems appeared when read aloud, and that gave me an insight into how her imagination works and how her poetry should sound; as to the latter – these poems utilize a theme and a structure just as well as Harvey’s first collection, but with the added bonuses of more punctuation, a bit more variation in form, and imagery that tends to be a bit more accessible to… well, to modern audiences (animal rights, science fiction, American predilections, etc.).

Probably the most interesting pieces for me ended up being the Robo-Boy poems, and not simply because of my appreciation for the science fiction or the weird; rather, I think these pieces worked for me because they actually have a character (a person, ironically) who can be followed, pitied, and enjoyed, as well as a story that goes somewhere. Pity the Bathtub… offered journeys of “the turn,” where from one line to the next, the story was recreated and subjects shifted; Modern Life finds a balance between that schizophrenia and a poetic narrative, and that, I believe, is this collection’s strong suit. “Moving Day” also does something somewhat meta with that “subject,” as when Robo-Boy learns about what “subjectivity” means, his own subjectivity shifts, and the subject of the poem turns to emotion and all of the questions associated with artificial life and feelings.

The “The Future of Terror” and the “Terror of the Future” series both fall back to Pity’s constant turning, but they do so with punctuation (laced with a cynical tone?) and without the obsession with coiling lines. Harvey’s addition of extreme short-form poems like “You Have My Eyes” and “New Friends” relieve the eyes, and give me room to breathe. And finally, it’s the first few poems that set up Harvey’s thematic structure – an almost didactic reproach of modern sensibilities. Overall, I have to say this is a strong collection that appears more mature than Harvey’s first book, and at the same time no less imaginative or moving.

[Upon further reflection, I'd have to give this 5 stars. The beauty of her work here isn't really reflected in my review, but this is a phenomenal collection.]

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reader of Harvey’s previous collections will no doubt find familiar ground in Modern Life: dream-like narratives, the frequent appearance of horses, an inventive playfulness (“Pug owners are 90% more likely to deny that they look like their pets than other dog owners,” for instance). Harvey is attracted to the proper noun and in her poems we encounter “Ghost Morse Code” for the stripes on the road (“not the new ones but the ones the wheels had worn away”), the representation of the sun as a “Gravity Hinge,” the invention of “Unrequited Love Puppies” beside the heartless hamsters and inside-out Chihuahuas. Half prose and half lineated, these poems gesture from the political to the intimate (see “The Invention of Love”), from the strangely fictitious to the hauntingly real; in each case a broken world is never more than a page or two away (“I know what you’ll say and it’s true. / We may already be drowning // if we choose to take the aerial view”). The poems in Modern Life deserve multiple readings, especially those in “The Future of Terror” and “Terror of the Future” sequences, the diction of which can admittedly be distracting as the language of each poem progresses sequentially through the alphabet. “The Future of Terror / 11” concludes with a hint of discovery, a hint of indifference, a hint of resignation: “There was one shot left in my rifle. / I polished my plimsolls. / I wrapped myself in a quilt. / So this is how you live in the present.” Harvey’s poems are full of such epiphany and Modern Life should be kept close at hand for this reason.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before picking up this collection, I had read a few of Matthea Harvey's poems in literary journals and I was struck by their playful use of language (akin to Harryette Mullen), humor and humanity. All of those skills play out well in this book and the variety of forms is refreshing, ranging from prose poems to the loose abecedarians of the two "future"/"terror" sections. But, like Ms. Mullen's work, it's only when all of this playfulness somehow connects to actual human experience that the poems really shine. For example, "The Empty Pet Factory" starts out like a lot of the poems here, setting up an absurd premise (a lover who works in a place where they manufacture pets to fill the emotional needs of their owners), but treats it so sincerely that it evokes laughter by touching on a truth we rarely look at (the fact that we often project a lot of humanity onto our domesticated pets). Most of the poems stop here, leaving the reader with a thought to ponder, but nothing to feel, which connects to a trend in contemporary poetry that stems from trying to appeal to its smaller, more intellectual audience. However this poem, like the other best ones in this book, takes it a step further and at the end connects this tendency to how we project our identities, desires and hopes onto potential mates, to heartbreaking effect. It's these moments that kept me moving through the collection, though the other moments of laughter and wonderment are much more than filler. I'm interested to see where else Ms. Harvey follows her imagination.

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthea Harvey, Modern Life (Graywolf Press, 2007)

“The ham flowers have veins and are rimmed in rind, a little meat sunset.”
(“Implications for Modern Life”)

I opened Matthea Harvey's Modern Life, turned to the first page, and was greeted with this as an introduction to her work. How could I not immediately fall in love? And I'm happy to say that as the collection progresses, it pretty much stay this good. Of course, the pit- and pratfalls of this sort of comic-grotesque brilliance do appear along the way, and it's not all as wonderful as one might hope; there are a handful of poems in this collection that are simply far too precious for their own (or anyone else's) good, viz. the complete text of “A Theory of Generations”:

You're it.
You're it.
You're it.

...and two entire sections of the book are taken up with odd abecedarian exercises (“The Future of Terror” and “Terror of the Future” respectively) which, by their very nature, tend to sound forced on occasion. But when Matthea Harvey is on her game, as she is in the bulk of the work to be found here, it's pure gold. Here I had intended to insert a choice bit of “The Lost Marching Band”, my favorite piece in the book, but as I read it again, I realize it's not possible to pull out a fragment. I cannot recommend highly enough that you grab yourself a copy of this one and read it yourself, as well as the rest of the book; this is a whole lot of fun. ****

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poems in this collection were really hit and miss for me, more so than in any other collection I've ever read. And, well, they're also much more modern than I'm used to, lacking the nostalgia (both in terms of form and content) of most collections I read. Obviously, given the title, that was Harvey's intent, but honestly, a poem about ham flowers? (Look it up if you don't know.) And she opens with that poem as well.

The Future of Terror series is one of my favorites, though I notice most reviewers disagree. While I can understand why the abecedarian form was distracting for many, I didn't find it so. I thought these poems about a soldier during the apocalypse very inventive and also human.

Similarly, I also enjoyed the Robo-Boy series. I say similarly because despite these being about a robot-child, it's a very human story about the future.

Those were the 2 sections I enjoyed, with a few other poems scattered throughout the other sections that still resonated, like "You Know This Too," from the pov of a centaur, and "Free Electricity," about a person that starts sprouting electric plugins. But the other poems fell flat, for me. Some for just being too silly--"You have my eyes / Give them back" (that's the entire poem)--but most because they didn't say anything to me.

Harvey is certainly an inventive writer, and I'd read more from her despite feeling mostly iffy by the collection.

[Diann Blakely]

A runner-up for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, Harvey offers a mixture of prose poems and standard verse in *Modern Life*, which accurately reflects the sense of foreboding terror that fills any serious news-watcher. Without her dazzling skill for accuracy and imagery, her poems would be heavy with the turgidity and portentousness that sinks so much contemporary poetry along these lines.

Her closeness of observation manifests itself in “Ode to the Double-Sided Nature of Things,” a Gothic spoof on the story of Noah’s Ark. In the book’s sections consisting of traditional verse, Harvey’s talent with visual and verbal scare tactics begin to acquire a less parabolic, more serious torque. “A stickpin stirred in our stomachs,” she introduces one typical contemporary scenario.

Yet Harvey’s aesthetic includes the recognition that living fully in our war-wracked, fear-wracked world is a victory and that withdrawal is the cheapest, most deluded sort of safety.







(originally published in *The Tennessean*, 20 April 2008)

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third book of Harvey's I've read this summer, and I have to say, while I wasn't hugely keen on the first book, I've really grown to love her.

These poems are surreal, mostly prose poems teetering very close to the edge of flash fiction. The Robo-Boy ones are my favorites, because of lines like this from Minotaur, No Maze:

At the DMV Robo-Boy presents his hands. It makes you wonder.
Why would they bother to engrave on each palm a life line (deep and
long), a head line (joined to his life line meaning he has "a cautious,
sometime fearful nature") and a heart line (faint and dotted, that
figures) and forget to give him fingerprints?

Why indeed. But as good as the Robo-Boy poems are, the two Terror sections, The Future of Terror and Terror of the Future, are great as well. They become even greater when you read the notes where the poet explains she made lists of words between future and terror in the dictionary and used those lists to form the poems. Clever, relevant, dark and good fun. Matthea Harvey may be becoming my favorite modern poet.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her third book of poetry titled Modern Life Harvey comes back with what seems to be an even balance between her previous two books, at least in terms of style. Again she touches on love, but with a hint of wry humor : “Your horoscope read: /You have an infectious smile. Mine said:/ Check the glove compartment” (68). Again with the paint imagery: “Dip that tiny brush into your paintbox and mix up something nice and muddy for me” (28).
She returns to using titles as the set point for her poems as she did often in Pity the Bathtub and she expands her repertoire with further play on words as she did more often in Sad Little Breathing Machine. Her magnum opus in this case is the “Future of Terror” and, “Terror of Future” series that she did based on words she found between the entries for Future and Terror in the dictionary. Truly it’s an amazing push in the realm of poetry as it uses form and restraint to enhance her approach to the subject matter.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish this were a book of short stories but otherwise I'm ok. Very inventive, sometimes beautiful. Perhaps more beautiful in the middle (to me at least, where I thought there were people, that I might relate to) and less beautiful when I realized that "The Future of Terror" and "Terror of the Future" were meant to be abecedarian, and then all I could do was struggle not to alphabetize while reading. I sense she would get along well with Jesse Ball. I sense I want to impose some limits on both of these people...ok now, stop being totally random. A little bit random, with a little bit of build, fine, but no I don't care to follow you around if you're going to be arbitrary.

[Cary · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the greatest poem in a book is the book itself, then this book is. The 'Terror of the Future' sequence is startling and sorrowful and powerful. Some words sound the same but mean different things, and that is a concept I think Matthea Harvey appreciates quite heavily. This is not a heavy book, but it's blackish-green blood runs deep into the next life.

Where O where is the God who let these poems happen?

Not as polished as the surrealist prose-poems of others, but still smart and taut.

Make yourself feel something gross and keep on living: that's what this book is about in my life now.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am in love with everything about this book, except for the "terror of the future", "future of terror" sections. Those sections felt like a departure from the beautiful explorations/examinations that take place in the other poems. The Roboboy poems were my favorite - "No One Will See Themselves in You" is probably my favorite poem in the whole collection.

I have only read through the book once. I want to spend some more time with the "terror" sections. They are appealing on some level - but they are what keeps this book from five stars for me.

[Summers Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the strongest book of contemporary poetry I have read in recent memory. The poet, through her words alone (How the hell?), produces a visceral splitting effect in regards to image, concepts, THINGS. Dichotomies and Binaries are cut, halved, and ripped apart, and yet the language remains the connection that can't be severed. There is such a strange tension in these poems! Many of her poems function as Hass-like epiphanies. They turn on themselves in stunning ways. I can't wait to read this one again when I get some time.

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

like the cover of this book (designed by Harvey), the poems have a strange math to them: the halving of the dominoe's division; the multiplication of dominoes in rows; the blackberry bruise of defaced, once-ordered numbers; deranged co-ordinates: horizontals (x-axis) and verticals (y-axis) stepping on each other...and somehow this relates to all her wonderful alliteration (an overused device that usually annoys me to no end). readreadread this!!

[Tess · Rating 5 out of 5]

This must be one of my favorites -- and Oni Buchanan's Spring.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

<333

[Courtney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Years ago, in a writing workshop, I was given a prompt to match words with their linguistic or sound-based, rather than definitional, opposites. I could pair "overalls" with "layover" or "juniper" with "perjury," which somehow made perfect, inexplicable sense to me and what it was that drew me to writing at all, the unexpected but insightful comparisons and linguistic tricks people can create to shed new light on the world.

But those comparisons and tricks in themselves are not poems. They are, when used well, helpful techniques to ground or expand poems, but on their own they're just empty tools, vessels. Many of Harvey's poems here read like that exercise over and over, but without real content and meaning behind the wordplay. The extra-short poems are obviously unnecessary, but even in its best moments, this collection only offers an interesting line or two within a poem, nothing fuller or more significant.

This emptiness feels especially disappointing in context of "The Future of Terror" or "Terror of the Future" that Harvey tries to construct, which could have seriously benefitted from more social, interpersonal, and/or personal narrative to actually explore and represent their concepts. I found Harvey's assumptions of health and illness frustrating in particular, but the criticism stretches beyond just those assumptions.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Inside The Good Idea

From the outside it is singular. One wooden horse. Inside ten men
sit cross-legged, knees touching. No noun has been invented yet to
describe this. They whisper that it would be like sitting in a wine
barrel if the curved walls were painted red. The contents are not content.
They would like some wine. They quarrel about who gets to sit
in the head until finally the smallest man clambers in, promising to
send messages back to the belly. He can only look out of one eye at a
time. At first there is nothing to report. Black, Dark, The Occasional
Star. Then Quiet Footsteps mixed with Questions. The children are
clamouring for it to be brought inside the walls. The head sends back
another message which gets caught in the throat: They are bringing
their toy horses to pay their respects to us, brushing their tiny manes, oil-
ing the little wheels. It must be a welcome change from playing war.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of strange poems that I found difficult to understand at times. But plenty of originality and interesting, unexpected lines. There is a numbered series titled The Future of Terror and another numbered series titled Terror of the Future. The poems in these series rely heavily on words that fall between 'future' and 'terror' alphabetically. There is also a series about Robo-Boy.

Favorites:
"Terror of the Future / 1"
"Terror of the Future / 2"

There was no ice storm, no helicoptered-in help,
no Hollywood ending. Just a gasp and then
no more you, which meant the end of me too.
- "Terror of the Future / 9"

[Amy Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is filled with poetry even non-poetry lover can enjoy. Harvey weaves the story of citizens and soldiers and their devastation at the end of their world. Through poetry that illuminates and describes the horrors of this situation, she effectively established a connection between me and all of those living with the knowledge that they’re about to die. Overall, her verse is enjoyable and at times chilling, making this an absolutely wonderful collection.

Review cross-listed here!

[Reedmylife · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was not a fan of this poetry book at all. I think most of the symbolism went above my head, but for almost the entirety of the book, I was unable to understand anything that was going on. I think this book is better for people who can easily understand symbolic writing that has a way deeper meaning.

[Natalie Homer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just not my style of poetry. Too much nonsense and cleverness.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful mixture of prose poems and lined poems from one of the most imaginative poets around. One you need in your collection.

[Sarkis Antonyan · Rating 4 out of 5]

a searing, dystopian view of the future written in such an acutely impressionistic, intellectual, and eccentric way aaaah so so wonderful and experimental! a must read for poets!!

[Timbo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Matthea Harvey writes weird, angular poems with odd juxtapositions and unexpected leaps of logic. She seems to eschew metaphor, but none of the sense is lost in any of her verses.

[Jes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these poems, by the end, made me say "Damn, Matthea Harvey!" out loud.