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Daniel Boone’s Window: Poems
Daniel Boone's Window, a new book of poetry by Matthew Wimberley, meditates on the past and future of contemporary Appalachia through explorations of both mythologized and actual landscapes. In poems that confront a region indelibly shaped by environmental turmoil, economic erasure, and the weight of an outside world intent on destroying it, Daniel Boone's Window works to reclaim and reckon with the realities and complexities of Appalachia. Wimberley's poetry seeks to dispel monolithic narratives of the region by capturing the rugged and the beautiful, approaching place with wonderment that subverts stereotype and blame.
- GenresPoetry
66 pages, Paperback
Published September 8, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 19, 2024
i'll never forget the three months i lived in boone; for that uncertain march, april, and may of 2020 - the tail end of my senior year of college - i found myself living in the mountains for the first time in my life, taking refuge in my partner's father's home after my college sent everyone home for the semester. in the years since, this region has remained like a salve for me, a place of memory, where youth finally met adulthood, and while i did not grow up there, i believe those months serve as a window into the emotional resonance of so many of these poems. wimberley plays with memory and endings (both personal and global) so well, weaving together the natural and personal such that they almost feel indistinguishable. i really loved this collection, of which my favorite poems are "Encomium for Our Last Days," "Snowmelt," and "I Receive His Body in a Velvet Bag with White Rope and Gold Embroidery."
January 27, 2022
Wimberley’s meditations on the past and future of contemporary Appalachia offer insightful images of a region full of magic, malaise, mystery, and mystical beauty.
From “Dawn”:
“Who has looked across
this torn landscape—a kingdom
of junked cars, trailers, checkout
lines at Dollar General
and Roses—and thought, what luck
to live by almost nothing?”
From “Family History”:
The day’s vapor so thick
it seems impassable—
the sky deckle-edged
between earth
and the stars
untouchable.”
Favorite Poems:
“Dawn”
“Family History”
“Window”
From “Dawn”:
“Who has looked across
this torn landscape—a kingdom
of junked cars, trailers, checkout
lines at Dollar General
and Roses—and thought, what luck
to live by almost nothing?”
From “Family History”:
The day’s vapor so thick
it seems impassable—
the sky deckle-edged
between earth
and the stars
untouchable.”
Favorite Poems:
“Dawn”
“Family History”
“Window”
April 18, 2026
Hints of Larry Levis and James Wright. Matthew Wimberley paints a place of belonging and longing, a place where grief can breathe. A poet to watch & follow.
September 12, 2023
I think this title does a really good job of representing the entire collection. Admittedly, when I first read it I was a bit skeptical. What, is this a pastoral, an ode to times past in the mountains?
No. I was wrong. The title works so well because it DOES have that nod to the past. The mountains are old and so are the traditions we have established in them. The family traditions, the grandfathers and fathers, and then also the the misty memories from earlier in the poet’s life. BUT that’s not where it ends. We get those characters moved into the present, either stricken with memory loss (Tabula Rasa) or admittedly blurry (False Memory). That self awareness helps Wimberley bring a tone, setting, and style that I associate with a time now decades in the past (the Cormac McCarthy register, the Phil Levine / Joe Millar style) into the present. Window, the source of the book’s title, illustrates this: the home description from an apocryphal letter from Daniel Boone (honestly, the window and our walking through it reminded me of that scene in Blade Runner where he’s using the computer to analyze the photo) is (literally) exploded by the violence of contemporary life.
I do like both the way in which Wimberley brings up violence and the frequency. It’s not super frequent and not one note. There is the violence of addiction that rips through Appalachia and the violence of the border patrol that are happening concurrently. It’s there but it’s not beating us over the head. Which is the insidious tragedy of such violence. That photo poem, Selenium Toning, that is one memorable poem. And the poem’s closing description of a photo of two men checking train cars for immigrant stowaways might also represent the larger book:
“And I think how an uneven / patch of grass has overgrown / the track, and the multitudes / of ways the State has made / terror so ordinary, / how these two / look almost bored—two kids / on the sofa while / th die parents entertain guests / —and this was eighty-two years ago, / how they haven’t aged / a day.”
I am a sucker for the early-stage Cormac McCarthy register. The apocalyptic tone, the elevated vocabulary, the existential questions that are left hanging, god I love it. This stuck out to me most at the start: Encomium for Our Last Days, Dawn, To Shadow, Family History. And then the tone shifted, and that was good. This is not a one-note collection.
Another similarity to McCarthy is that this is, generally, a male world. But, again, Wimberley bringing late-20th century style into the now, the female appearance that sticks out to me is from Deep Field, November 2016: not a woman idealized for her great beauty or youth, not someone bent into the crook of the man’s body, but rather a woman doing something that the man admits he cannot do. Again, that self-awareness.
Keep it going, Matt. You’re onto something.
No. I was wrong. The title works so well because it DOES have that nod to the past. The mountains are old and so are the traditions we have established in them. The family traditions, the grandfathers and fathers, and then also the the misty memories from earlier in the poet’s life. BUT that’s not where it ends. We get those characters moved into the present, either stricken with memory loss (Tabula Rasa) or admittedly blurry (False Memory). That self awareness helps Wimberley bring a tone, setting, and style that I associate with a time now decades in the past (the Cormac McCarthy register, the Phil Levine / Joe Millar style) into the present. Window, the source of the book’s title, illustrates this: the home description from an apocryphal letter from Daniel Boone (honestly, the window and our walking through it reminded me of that scene in Blade Runner where he’s using the computer to analyze the photo) is (literally) exploded by the violence of contemporary life.
I do like both the way in which Wimberley brings up violence and the frequency. It’s not super frequent and not one note. There is the violence of addiction that rips through Appalachia and the violence of the border patrol that are happening concurrently. It’s there but it’s not beating us over the head. Which is the insidious tragedy of such violence. That photo poem, Selenium Toning, that is one memorable poem. And the poem’s closing description of a photo of two men checking train cars for immigrant stowaways might also represent the larger book:
“And I think how an uneven / patch of grass has overgrown / the track, and the multitudes / of ways the State has made / terror so ordinary, / how these two / look almost bored—two kids / on the sofa while / th die parents entertain guests / —and this was eighty-two years ago, / how they haven’t aged / a day.”
I am a sucker for the early-stage Cormac McCarthy register. The apocalyptic tone, the elevated vocabulary, the existential questions that are left hanging, god I love it. This stuck out to me most at the start: Encomium for Our Last Days, Dawn, To Shadow, Family History. And then the tone shifted, and that was good. This is not a one-note collection.
Another similarity to McCarthy is that this is, generally, a male world. But, again, Wimberley bringing late-20th century style into the now, the female appearance that sticks out to me is from Deep Field, November 2016: not a woman idealized for her great beauty or youth, not someone bent into the crook of the man’s body, but rather a woman doing something that the man admits he cannot do. Again, that self-awareness.
Keep it going, Matt. You’re onto something.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews