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Wick First Book
Translation: Matthew Minicucci: Winner of the 2014 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize
Winner of the 2014 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize
Jane Hirshfield, Judge
“What are we to do with anger? What are we to do with love? What are we to do with one another, given all that happens and has happened between us? These are a few of the questions that haunt Matthew Minicucci’s deeply original and profoundly moving poems. In work personal and learned, steeped in familial life, the natural world, and the culture’s storehouse of literature, myth, and history, Minicucci transforms outward knowledge and observation into accurate and deftly navigable vessels of inner life. Whales’ hearts and family stories; etymologies, metrics, and syntax; the war machines and fishing lures of past and present worlds—all are harnessed together, hammered together, in this book-long exploration of our shared and particular human fates.”
—Jane Hirshfield
“Matthew Minicucci begins his collection with his prize-winning poem, ‘A Whale’s Heart,’ where in the old world, a rose petal tincture was used to minimize a scar, but never concealed it completely. This is a book of such faint scars, losses almost imperceptible but there, hidden under the hairline, or just above the heart. It is how these losses are transformed, through the alchemy of memory, forgiveness and love, small, intense, painterly studies of a country populated by the human family.”
—Dorianne Laux
“If fate is, as Aurelius contends, a weaver, Matthew Minicucci’s remarkable collection Translation stunningly unravels all we have been the fate of each species, the fate of each family, the fate of languages, and the fate of the ancient texts which constitute the violent, compelling sea on which so much of our understanding of the present floats and into whose complex amnion we never tire of descending. Translation not only explores what we might call the work and origins of literal translation, but it is itself a beautiful, unflinching, unfolding embodiment of our most essential human translational the work of translating experience into words, memory into understanding, and anger into forgiveness. Here is a rare collection that must be held in full, a book that deepens its inquiries with the turn of every page. If the metaphor is itself a kind of translation, then Minicucci demonstrates with both imagistic precision and an abiding associative mystery how all things—both the fist and the clasp, the sword and the shield, the hawk and the turtle, and, finally, the lilac bush and the switch fashioned from it—when carefully lifted and turned, implicate us all.”
—Kathleen Graber
Jane Hirshfield, Judge
“What are we to do with anger? What are we to do with love? What are we to do with one another, given all that happens and has happened between us? These are a few of the questions that haunt Matthew Minicucci’s deeply original and profoundly moving poems. In work personal and learned, steeped in familial life, the natural world, and the culture’s storehouse of literature, myth, and history, Minicucci transforms outward knowledge and observation into accurate and deftly navigable vessels of inner life. Whales’ hearts and family stories; etymologies, metrics, and syntax; the war machines and fishing lures of past and present worlds—all are harnessed together, hammered together, in this book-long exploration of our shared and particular human fates.”
—Jane Hirshfield
“Matthew Minicucci begins his collection with his prize-winning poem, ‘A Whale’s Heart,’ where in the old world, a rose petal tincture was used to minimize a scar, but never concealed it completely. This is a book of such faint scars, losses almost imperceptible but there, hidden under the hairline, or just above the heart. It is how these losses are transformed, through the alchemy of memory, forgiveness and love, small, intense, painterly studies of a country populated by the human family.”
—Dorianne Laux
“If fate is, as Aurelius contends, a weaver, Matthew Minicucci’s remarkable collection Translation stunningly unravels all we have been the fate of each species, the fate of each family, the fate of languages, and the fate of the ancient texts which constitute the violent, compelling sea on which so much of our understanding of the present floats and into whose complex amnion we never tire of descending. Translation not only explores what we might call the work and origins of literal translation, but it is itself a beautiful, unflinching, unfolding embodiment of our most essential human translational the work of translating experience into words, memory into understanding, and anger into forgiveness. Here is a rare collection that must be held in full, a book that deepens its inquiries with the turn of every page. If the metaphor is itself a kind of translation, then Minicucci demonstrates with both imagistic precision and an abiding associative mystery how all things—both the fist and the clasp, the sword and the shield, the hawk and the turtle, and, finally, the lilac bush and the switch fashioned from it—when carefully lifted and turned, implicate us all.”
—Kathleen Graber
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 28, 2015
1 person is currently reading
11 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Minicucci
6 books25 followersMatthew Minicucci is the award-winning author of three collections of poetry. His fourth, Dual will be published by Acre Books on October 15th, 2023. His poems and essays have appeared in journals including APR, The Believer, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, POETRY, and The Southern Review. His work has garnered numerous accolades including the Stafford/Hall Oregon Book Award and the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, along with fellowships from organizations including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Dartmouth College, the National Parks Service, and the James Merrill House, among others. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Blount Scholars Program at the University of Alabama.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 9, 2020
Classically-inspired, evocative of the sound of a Southern drawl. Poems about mothers, things that fly, and shed bronze armor. It’s always hard to leave reviews for poetry; it’s probably best just to say that I liked it, though there was nothing in it that made me bleed.
February 15, 2016
I'm biased of course, knowing Matt. But I feel like I can be fairly even given how different our aesthetics are. But I loved this book. And I just recommended it to someone who was having trouble structuring their own book.
And one of the poems made me cry. And that almost never happens. So that's something.
And one of the poems made me cry. And that almost never happens. So that's something.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews