City of Incandescent Light

by Matt McBride

Poetry. "Clearly, these poems are the Chinese fortunes dandelions would dispense, that is, if you woke up too in cities like these that would give Continental Bards a run for their money, and then some, that is, if verse finally managed to gain the upper hand on prose--local banalities upended in an orgy of absurd lyrical excess."--Timothy Liu



"'We are all just trying / to make it through yesterday, ' writes Matt McBride in this painfully insightful exploration of our twenty-first-century brand of alienation. In poems that are stylish and skewering, with uncommon wit and unsettling resonance, McBride takes on technology, militarism, love, nostalgia, divorce, the ubiquity of advertising, the institution of the presidency, and the ever-expanding surveillance state. This is a deeply sad and strangely fun and totally shining book that has given me, among other things, the best slogan I've heard yet for the current moment: 'no flag is small enough.'"--Natalie Shapero

Genres: Poetry

76 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2018

Reviews

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Someone forgot to fill in our faces’

Midwestern poet Matt McBride earned his MFA from Bowling Green State University and a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati. His poetry has previously appeared or is forthcoming from Across the Margin, Cream City Review, Diagram, FENCE, Forklift, Ohio, Map Literary, The Mississippi Review, Ninth Letter, Typo, and PANK amongst others. Currently, he is a lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric at the University of Iowa and will be on the English faculty at Wilson College this fall.

Matt’s poetry digs darkly into the realm of alienation we all accept as part of today’s chaotic and puzzling world. His poems are impressively constructed, giving the reader the sense that they are Matt’s thoughts that don’t need reading in order to enter our psyches. Some poems are light/incandescent while other immerge from shadows, pleading to be compelling, and succeeding.

CITY OF THE VULNERABLE

You carry a sharpened melon baller
and portion yourself to every stranger.

You watch 8mm films of the rain
and bedroom walls.

Dandelions dispense Chinese fortunes,
things like In less than a decade
no one will remember what cottage cheese is,
or Each man is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.

Satellites keep catching in the trees
And periodically
Need to be poked out
With broom sticks.

Every picture is of you,
bitten by sheep.

CITY OF INCANDESCENT LIGHT

The Salvation Armies are chock-full
of answering machines
with left over messages.

Imaginary children
appear on your console TV.

Even the weather’s outdated.

The staples
Holding on your felt wings
Rust a little.

Magic is here with every poem every page, and every moment of remembering his words, the way he phrases them. Welcome to now, Matt.

[Melissa Helton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection shows humanity so close to each other, but how we can also be profoundly disconnected. The lines in the poems were beautiful and the stacking of images to convey emotion show the poet's skill.

[Suzanne Ondrus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fascinated by the use of cities as a title and organization device, that reminded me of Calvino. Very original and fresh! This pairs nicely with Szporluk's book Virginals.

[Natalie Homer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ordered City of Incandescent Light after being intrigued by some of McBride’s poems in literary journals. This collection is one of the few I’ve come across that feels like one continuous poem. (I think of the poems as holding hands.) The rhythms and structures of the poems blend into each other, with the repeated titles playing into that structure.

The poems here are ethereal and intriguing in their imagery, as well as subtly critical—though I wasn’t always sure what or who was the object of the speaker’s discernment.

Divorce came up in a couple of poems, but I wish it had carried through the book. The divorce felt very real, serious, and personal, which would’ve provided a nice anchor to the other, more imaginative/dreamlike material.

[Braj · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book as it elevates the mundane to beauty. I like how the author repeats the titles sometimes as life certainly goes in circles and his metaphors go into the heart of the complex emotions that can be had in the seemingly day to day. I had kind of fallen into the idea that good poetry meant old poetry, but this book came to me and has reminded me that some amazing poetry continues to be written.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning first collection from a poet everyone should be reading. McBride's poems are strikingly concise. They float into you like "doll-sized" snow, like echoes from an orchestra of ghosts. A book layered with the best kind of strange, where "even the weather's outdated" and "the intercourse of angels is light." Yes, sounds like the perfect kind of light!

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

"How do you survive/what you've already lived through?"
My goodness...

City of Incandescent Light is a brutally and beautifully honest body of work that demands emotional vulnerability. The elegance of Matt McBride's poetry will leave you breathless, making your heart swell and break and mend itself in melancholic victory.