Improvisation Without Accompaniment

by Matt Morton, Patricia Smith (Foreword)

"Expert and instinctive, like a cool Ed Wilkerson sax solo bouncing with lived rhythms. Morton's consummate poems will echo long after they are read." ― Booklist Selected by Patricia Smith as winner of the 2018 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, Matt Morton’s debut poetry collection Improvisation Without Accompaniment embraces uncertainty with a spirit of joyous playfulness. These lyric poems follow the rhythms of life for a young man growing up in a small Texas town. As the speaker wrestles with ruptures within the nuclear family and the loss of his religious beliefs, he journeys toward a deeper self-awareness and discovers a fuller palette of experiences. Over the course of this collection, the changing seasons of small-town Texas life give way to surprise encounters in distant cities. The speaker’s awareness of mortality grows even as he improvises an affirming response to life’s toughest questions. Poignant, searching, and earnestly philosophical, Improvisation Without Accompaniment reaches for meaning within life’s joys and griefs.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2020

Reviews

[Dawn Orsak · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some really stunning lines in the book, thought provoking passages and novel language, but some of the poems were so personal or so obtuse, they became just a collection of words. I couldn’t get a birds’ eye view of exactly what some of them were about, which I found frustrating.

[Wuttipol✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the Wind, Not the View

Two thousand miles away from here, my father
is lying in a strange room, being tended to.
It is always getting later. No matter
if morning is dampening the earth,
or burnt orange evening rending itself apart,
the doldrums of afternoon stuck in between.
This morning, I was sifting through
a famous nearly-dead novelist’s letters,
wondering why he’d kept them all
so neatly filed away. I wasn’t certain,
but I had an idea. An idea
cannot fix a heart. It cannot douse
a house on fire, which earlier I thought
my neighbor’s was, but no, he was burning
wood in his backyard. Right now, I’m heating
a frozen dinner. In the studio next door
a woman is singing, and a voice on the radio
is trying to resuscitate itself beneath layers
of static. I had an idea that each day seems
the same, yet somehow shorter.
Slight variances in the weather,
rhythmic substitutions in the traffic’s pulse.
I’m not sure what, but something
is long overdue. Do you understand
what it is I am saying? Somewhere
in America my father is dying and I am
sitting here, listening to the radio.

[Al Gritten · Rating 4 out of 5]

These lines, for me, offers insight into this collection: from "Not the Wind, Not the View", "Two thousand miles away from here, my father / is lying in a strange room, being tended to. ...Somewhere / in America my father is dying and I am / sitting here, listening to the radio," I tend to prefer the more traditional poets but have found a pleasant surprise in Morton's work. His poetry is an evocative and lyrical look at the poignancy of life in all its shades and subtleties. As I recommended his work to someone I told them that he explores life in all its complexity and is at the same time both significant and spiritual. A powerful book.

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Check out Sam Ross's lovely review here: https://www.usi.edu/sir/amie-whittemo...

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems about growing up, family, loss, and discovery.

from Improvisation After Keats: "Delight can be drawn / from the smallest things. A flurry / late in the season. The taste, the first / in years, of ginger ale. But these pale // when measured against the gleaming / monolith the mind constructs in sleep, / or daydreams in the striped awning's shade."

from Overture: "I do not think the sun will smile again ever / if your going leaves merely / a man-shaped space, a small black hole in the air."

from Pale Annual: "This time of year / again, its hallway drafts. Season / of spendthrifts, twinkling lights, wishful thinking."

[Kory Reeder · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the introduction, Patricia Smith discusses the importance of introductions with Matt Morton’s poems, I think this is certainly true as a collection as well. The first poem, “Republic” is stunning, and sets the tone for the rest of the book. Smart, sensitive, and rewarding, it’s definitely a hard one to put down, and one I would highly recommend.