Sad Little Breathing Machine: Poems [Paperback]

Matthea Harvey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2004

Harvey, whose debut collection was praised by the New Yorker
as "intensely visual, mournfully comic and syntactically
inventive," offers her second stunning collection

Units are the engines
I understand best.

One betrayal, two.
Merrily, merrily, merrily.
-from "Introduction to the World"

In Sad Little Breathing Machine, Matthea Harvey explores the strange and intricate mechanics of human systems-of the body, of thought, of language itself. These are the engines, like poetry, that propel both our comprehension and misunderstanding. "If you're lucky," Harvey writes, "after a number of / revolutions, you'll / feel something catch."

"I pictured myself arriving at an amusement park, only none of the rides are familiar. I considered running away. I could break my neck or be catapulted into the sky. I might never be seen again. It's only poetry, I reminded myself, and climbed on board. I'm tossed and bucked and jabbed and lashed and flipped. I'm having a nearly insane amount of fun, and I don't want it to ever end."--James Tate

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Taut and up-to-the-minute in its intellectual and its formal concerns, Harvey's sophomore effort seems sure to consolidate her status as a young poet to watch. In acute unrhymed couplets, typographically teasing experiments and titles as oddly audacious as the poems themselves ("O the Zoetrope & the Periscope Should Be Friends"), Harvey explores the possibility that people are nothing more than desiring machines; the chance that she and her friends are as predictable as physical law or ephemeral as gossip; and the countervailing weight of love and want. An early poem propositions readers, "Invent the sun & edition the trees": later she explains "I am no relation/ to the sky but to the mechanical// dragon wrapped in tissue paper," or exclaims enticingly, "Frond-fond & pond-proud/ we sugar the obstacle dark." Harvey characteristically combines childhood (or teen) scenes with material from philosophical or literary theory: "Girls who could see around/ corners whispered 'or'/ to one another." Though many younger poets share her interests, few match her verbal assurance, nor her skill in knowing when to stop. Harvey (Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form) also includes a series of prose poems constructed like fairy tales (such as "The Transparent Heir Apparent"); these allegorical stories ballast what might otherwise seem an overexcited, or overly elliptical, collection. Admirers of Brenda Hillman, or even Anne Carson, may find here a new favorite. And although fans of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus-based desiring machines may find the scale here claustrophobic, reduction is precisely the poet's problematic, explored with force and imagination.
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Review

"...In between the words, resonances arise: echoes of nostalgia, the desire for comfort, the longing for connection." -- —Time Out New York

"Full of tiny music boxes; peer into them, hear the songs and fall into strange, glittering and familiar abysses." -- —BOMB

"Harvey is enormously gifted... This is an excellent, intense book." -- —Chicago Tribune

"Matthea Harvey is a poet of haunting wit." -- —Poetry Flash

Harvey’[s] bright creative energy, her gusto, glows like a heater in the wintry rooms of the poems. -- Boston Review, Sum. 04

This book is full of tiny music boxes;...hear the songs and fall into strange, glittering and familiar abysses. -- BOMB, Sum. 2004

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press; First Edition edition (March 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555973965
• ISBN-13: 978-1555973964
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #688,974 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Matthea Harvey's most recent book of poetry, Modern Life, won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a New York Times Notable Book of 2008 as well as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the author of two previous books of poetry, Sad Little Breathing Machine and Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form, as well as a forthcoming children's book, The Little General and the Giant Snowflake, illustrated by Elizabeth Zechel. A contributing editor to jubilat, BOMB and Meatpaper, she teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence and lives in Brooklyn.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fresh & Unusual, February 14, 2007

By 

Glenn Raucher (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sad Little Breathing Machine: Poems (Paperback)

(Matthea Harvey read as part of the Writer's Voice Visiting Authors Series at the West Side YMCA on 8 December 2006. This was my introduction):

Matthea's Harvey's poetry is like going to a foreign country, and not knowing the language. Perhaps you stay a while. Eventually, words and phrases which pulled tantalizingly away from you at first, their sounds striking and bold, evocative and possessing an almost subconscious power, begin to coalesce.

Then, still with the breathtaking mystery of staying in a strange place, you may find you are able to gain some small entry into its true essence, while still maintaining the sense of wonder at something truly different.

Matthea Harvey's poetry rewards the effort, involvement and attention of the reader. Her language is fresh and unusual in the best sense--without contrivance or petty literary gamesmanship. She has the ability to stimulate the reader's mind, and to suddenly swoop in, hit directly in the gut by creating shocking, unpredictable connections. The work is alive and moving on the page, vibrant, ever-opening, capable of astonishing power and emotional force, while never being melodramatic--the exactitude of Matthea's language will not allow it--and of course, the work remains stunningly original.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining but chaotic avant-garde poetry, June 10, 2005

By 

R. H. White (mn usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sad Little Breathing Machine: Poems (Paperback)

There are some interesting prose poems, wacky skewed narratives with surrealist wit.

When I read the rest of the poems, I found them frustratingly incomprehensible, even compared to other contemporary poetry. I did, however, enjoy discussing them with friends, reading them aloud and trying to come up with even a hint of what they might be trying to do.

9 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A treasure, February 25, 2004

By 

Katey "reader" (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sad Little Breathing Machine: Poems (Paperback)

I had never heard of Matthea Harvey when I picked up her book and flipped through it. But it didn't matter whether I heard her name before or not, her poems grabbed me by the cheeks and slammed my face into the pages. I instantly fell hard for this book and bought it on the spot. I love her style. She's fresh and smart. This is a happy book of poems that makes me laugh in full-fledged giddiness and awe at such wit, such brilliance. Matthea is like a slurpee with a hot pink bendy straw, and I mean that in the best sense of the word. Ahhh! Refreshing and uplifting. My new favorite poet. My favorite part? The first two lines of "Introduction to a Diction:" Galoshless. I / stood by the river, all ashiver. Gosh I was hoping for liver.