Customer Reviews

Things We Don't Know We Don't Know

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Yes, I admit to being a friend of the author. A friend who does not usually appreciate much modern poetry, to be exact. Yet I've always enjoyed Matt's work. Though he has the rare ability to craft poems which are quirky or sincerely humorous, this book does a great job of showing not only the depth of his heart but also his skill at recognizing often mundane details about the world around us and highlighting them to show just how special a place it is in which we all live.

This is not poetry purely for the sake of the poet but poetry for all of us. For that reason more than any I bought and enjoy this book. I think you should, too.

Mason follows in the best traditions of poets like Billy Collins and Ted Kooser in using everyday experiences and seemingly innocuous objects to build a deep connection with his reader. Rather than bury his message in thick language and metaphor, he uses a playful and quirky delivery to describe things we all think we know, but in a way that cuts much deeper and sticks with you long after you put the book down.

Matt Mason is one of the best young poets today. His book is sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always thought provoking.

Matt has this uncanny way of making you laugh right when you think you are going to cry and then make you snort-laugh instead of it. He captures daily moments and distills them into the delicate dance of smoke tendrils arising from sacred ritual or plants them in the dirt with the beets -- either way, you know this still frame from your life -- and if you don't you want to.

Matt Mason claims he doesn't want to be a funny poet anymore, and he doesn't want to be a cow poet either. Yeah, bull. He will be a cow poet as long as he has his hand on the pulse of the Great Plains, and he'll be a funny poet as long as he has an uncanny ability to see the world in a way that knocks his audience off kilter.

Slam stalwart Mason has a gift for inverting expectations, penetrating prejudices, and using language in a way that keeps readers guessing. His insight finds expression in performance poems, the stuff of legend in his home city of Omaha. When he preaches the good news of Jesus' fondness for Tom Waits, or translates cow poems so they're comprehensible to Flemish cows, we laugh because the ideas we think we know are left topsy-turvy in Mason's wake.

We laugh at Matt Mason's poetry because it's truer than anything we realized a moment ago. His language is lucid and his images are bite-sized, but he doesn't sacrifice sophistication to make room for his audience. In a poetry world where our choice seems to be between academic enigma or adolescent gloom, these poems pack a punch that is both meaningful and lucid. Poetry fans and curious beginners alike will find this book bracing, smart, and very very funny.