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Who's Who Vivid: Poems
When Caesar said about horses that if the gods hadn’t invented them, we would have to, he could have been talking about Matt Hart whose poems are of such immediate, radiant presence, they seem as true and necessary as air. In vital self-sabotages and improvisational self-renewals, the buzz of the mosh-pit pokes us through the sky. The book you now hold in your hands is luxurious with nerve, speed and crash, the work of an explorative explosiveness that is constantly whacked by the world as it is. Welcome to a new realism hatching from the old. Welcome to the human heart. Welcome to the launch site. - Dean Young These poems marry cinema and song, conflagration and precision in a double-ceremony lead by Matt Hart in an enormous cathedral with no roof. The work in Who's Who Vivid is driven by strange narrative and daring associations, experiments that negotiate the terrain between the subconscious and the shag carpet. It is a remarkable display of virtuosity and freshness. These poems are stunning and funny and troubling, deeply serious, off-handedly brilliant. Matt Hart has cast out a net and brought back news from another world, written in the language of this one -urgent, entertaining, candid, and smart. Who's Who Vivid is a sizzling debut by an important new poet. - Laura Kasischke
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Matt Hart
55 books43 followersMatt Hart’s books include FAMILIAR (Pickpocket Books, 2022), Everything Breaking/For Good (YesYes Books, 2019), and The Obliterations (Pickpocket Books, 2019). His poems, reviews, and essays have been published in journals including American Poetry Review, Conduit, jubilat, The Kenyon Review, and Lungfull!, among others. His awards include a Pushcart Prize, a grant from The Shifting Foundation, and fellowships from both the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.
Hart was a cofounder and the editor in chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety from 1994–2019. A faculty mentor in the PNCA/Willamette University Low-Residency Creative Writing MFA Program and the head of creative writing at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, he has also been a visiting writer/professor at both the Vermont Studio Center and the University of Texas at Austin. Hart’s music has been featured on MTV and in major motion pictures, including Kevin Smith’s Mallrats. He plays in the post-punk/indie rock bands TRAVEL and NEVERNEW.
Older bio:
Matt Hart is the author of four books of poems, Who's Who Vivid (Slope Editions, 2006), Wolf Face (H_NGM_N BKS, 2010), Light-Headed (BlazeVOX, 2011), and Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless (Typecast Publishing, 2012), as well as several chapbooks. A fifth collection, Debacle Debacle, is forthcoming from H_NGM_N BKS in 2013. Additionally, his poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Big Bell, Cincinnati Review, Coldfront, Columbia Poetry Review, H_NGM_N, Harvard Review, jubilat, Lungfull!, and Post Road, among others. His awards include a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from both the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band TRAVEL. This fall he will be a Visiting Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Texas, Austin.
Hart was a cofounder and the editor in chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety from 1994–2019. A faculty mentor in the PNCA/Willamette University Low-Residency Creative Writing MFA Program and the head of creative writing at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, he has also been a visiting writer/professor at both the Vermont Studio Center and the University of Texas at Austin. Hart’s music has been featured on MTV and in major motion pictures, including Kevin Smith’s Mallrats. He plays in the post-punk/indie rock bands TRAVEL and NEVERNEW.
Older bio:
Matt Hart is the author of four books of poems, Who's Who Vivid (Slope Editions, 2006), Wolf Face (H_NGM_N BKS, 2010), Light-Headed (BlazeVOX, 2011), and Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless (Typecast Publishing, 2012), as well as several chapbooks. A fifth collection, Debacle Debacle, is forthcoming from H_NGM_N BKS in 2013. Additionally, his poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Big Bell, Cincinnati Review, Coldfront, Columbia Poetry Review, H_NGM_N, Harvard Review, jubilat, Lungfull!, and Post Road, among others. His awards include a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from both the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band TRAVEL. This fall he will be a Visiting Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Texas, Austin.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 4, 2022
for some reason this felt like... when an academic who always does hard line analysis tries creative writing. it's sorta... too smart? respect the content, maybe i wanted more from the form. maybe its also... when people do sincere writing they do it by accident in a letter home. if you are genuinely really well read how can you make a poem of happy accidents and nice feelings.. sorta too far ingrained into the canon.
April 24, 2020
Who weighs more: me or this twitching carp?
you or the buried beneath us? The way I see it,
something's gotta come to the surface, or one of us
gets a window smashed. I may be thirty-ish and still
interested in seashells, but not enough
to get sucked down the drain looking
for a rowboat with my head in the sand.
It would be hard to express the degree to which having seen Matt Hart read his poetry changes the way they hit the brain later. I’ve been fortunate enough to see him read twice (and introduce him at one of those readings). Part punk show, part tent revival, his is one of the few really essential readings I attended during my undergraduate degree at Tusculum.
This is the earliest collection of his that I have read. Its incredible how much of the mature poet already howls in these poems. His work is marked by energy levels that would make Chernobyl blush – radical, dialectic, always on the edge of a total linguistic meltdown/explosion/catastrophe. This early work contains a number of poems that lack the plasmatic cohesion of his best, most mature later collections – but these ephemeral blips simply vaporize around the incredible dynamism of the best of those collected here.
The way Hart works his language is like watching an arc welder spark through sunglasses and there are times you do almost feel like you need to look away to avoid being blinded. The best poems here can stand toe-to-toe with the titanic thundershouts you might find in Debacle Debacle or Radiant Action. What few missteps there are here, poems that feel less cyanidic and more like cotton candy, cannot stop the propulsion. Hart, even at this early stage, distills so much of the best parts of effective poetry: dynamic reflection, negative capability, self-as-boundless, self-regarding-world-connection, from Wittgenstein to Jawbreaker and back.
I think perhaps the best compliment I can pay to this collection is that it can kick awake the poet in you. What a ride. My brain is itching in verse. Hart’s poems are meant to shake us back in to the messy fucking world crashing in from every side.
Feel sorry if you want to, but the sun is shining
The sounds of garbage trucks
Jaws of life
You will pull the pitted incisor
you or the buried beneath us? The way I see it,
something's gotta come to the surface, or one of us
gets a window smashed. I may be thirty-ish and still
interested in seashells, but not enough
to get sucked down the drain looking
for a rowboat with my head in the sand.
It would be hard to express the degree to which having seen Matt Hart read his poetry changes the way they hit the brain later. I’ve been fortunate enough to see him read twice (and introduce him at one of those readings). Part punk show, part tent revival, his is one of the few really essential readings I attended during my undergraduate degree at Tusculum.
This is the earliest collection of his that I have read. Its incredible how much of the mature poet already howls in these poems. His work is marked by energy levels that would make Chernobyl blush – radical, dialectic, always on the edge of a total linguistic meltdown/explosion/catastrophe. This early work contains a number of poems that lack the plasmatic cohesion of his best, most mature later collections – but these ephemeral blips simply vaporize around the incredible dynamism of the best of those collected here.
The way Hart works his language is like watching an arc welder spark through sunglasses and there are times you do almost feel like you need to look away to avoid being blinded. The best poems here can stand toe-to-toe with the titanic thundershouts you might find in Debacle Debacle or Radiant Action. What few missteps there are here, poems that feel less cyanidic and more like cotton candy, cannot stop the propulsion. Hart, even at this early stage, distills so much of the best parts of effective poetry: dynamic reflection, negative capability, self-as-boundless, self-regarding-world-connection, from Wittgenstein to Jawbreaker and back.
I think perhaps the best compliment I can pay to this collection is that it can kick awake the poet in you. What a ride. My brain is itching in verse. Hart’s poems are meant to shake us back in to the messy fucking world crashing in from every side.
Feel sorry if you want to, but the sun is shining
The sounds of garbage trucks
Jaws of life
You will pull the pitted incisor
October 2, 2019
"I communicate best when digesting an avalanche."
So many strong lines throughout this collection. Excuse me as I tack them onto my wall.
"Life is a beautiful hailstorm, which is kind of forlorn and scenic all at the same time. Or put another way I am an out-of-work oboe player."
So many strong lines throughout this collection. Excuse me as I tack them onto my wall.
"Life is a beautiful hailstorm, which is kind of forlorn and scenic all at the same time. Or put another way I am an out-of-work oboe player."
September 23, 2010
Two things repeatedly came to my mind as I read this book. "Wow, this poem reminds me of a Dean Young poem." and "Hey, there are/is elephants and/or ice cream in this poem." I like Dean Young, and I like ice cream, though I'm not as fond of elephants. I also like Forklift, Ohio, Hart's journal. However, I had difficulty enjoying this book throughout. A few poems really floored me, where I was like, "Wow, this poem that reminds me of Dean Young and has ice cream in it is killer." Many other poems were forgettable, as I tend to forget things that aren't super fun. I think Matt Hart is probably a great poet, but I think he writes the wrong kind of poems for me to remember.
Favorite Poems
-The Weight of My Next Best Things
- Poem Where The Message Trails Off
- Why I'm Not A Robot
- Letter to a Friend I'll Never See Again
- Where is your Head in the Greatness, the Scheme
(Notice, many of my favorites are towards the beginning.)
I READ THIS AGAIN AND APPARENTLY I WAS AN IDIOT IN DECEMBER OF OHNINE. THIS BOOK RULES. THE REPETITIoN DOES GET A LITTLE OLD, BUT MAN THIS IS NO THREE NO SUCKER BOOK. RULEZ.
Favorite Poems
-The Weight of My Next Best Things
- Poem Where The Message Trails Off
- Why I'm Not A Robot
- Letter to a Friend I'll Never See Again
- Where is your Head in the Greatness, the Scheme
(Notice, many of my favorites are towards the beginning.)
I READ THIS AGAIN AND APPARENTLY I WAS AN IDIOT IN DECEMBER OF OHNINE. THIS BOOK RULES. THE REPETITIoN DOES GET A LITTLE OLD, BUT MAN THIS IS NO THREE NO SUCKER BOOK. RULEZ.
October 31, 2008
You know what? Dean Young can suck my dick. & I tried- I really fucking tried- to like this book [this aesthetic, this disease].
But then PAUL explained to me what I'm missing (sincerity, for instance). & now:
I have to read the goddamn thing again. I dunno. A one-off's wicked cunty to begin with (Dean Young can still suck my dick btw) & I'm stretched thin.
But, dear friends (hello, no one!), I'm going back in...
But then PAUL explained to me what I'm missing (sincerity, for instance). & now:
I have to read the goddamn thing again. I dunno. A one-off's wicked cunty to begin with (Dean Young can still suck my dick btw) & I'm stretched thin.
But, dear friends (hello, no one!), I'm going back in...
September 15, 2009
Raucously full of metaphorical elephants (my favorite kind), real rhinos, live doubt, and all at a heart-racing pace. Bravo!
(A nice post-script for me is that I am always looking for grown-up peoples' poems that I can share with kids -- poems that thrill me and [sigh:] are rated G or PG13 -- and I finished this book with a handful. Thank you, Matt!)
(A nice post-script for me is that I am always looking for grown-up peoples' poems that I can share with kids -- poems that thrill me and [sigh:] are rated G or PG13 -- and I finished this book with a handful. Thank you, Matt!)
Read
August 6, 2007its a nice and beautiful Book..
April 11, 2008
Killer!! Not only are these poems great, so is Matt as reader of poems. Check 'em out when he comes to YOUR town.
January 11, 2009
ear plugs necessary
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews