Time & Money [Hardcover]

William Matthews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 19, 1995

In his tenth book of poems, his first since Selected Poems and Translations 1969 to 1991, William Matthews turns in a fresh direction. In Time & Money, this worldly and ironical poet moves toward an accommodation with life through a maze of losses and loves - music, wine, women, travel, sports, and country pleasures. He enters time as though it were liquid: "Thus water licks its steady way through stone." He writes of musicians who keep time faithfully: "They have to hit the note / and the emotion, both, with the one poor / arrow of the voice." And he approaches the realities of money: "Money's not an abstraction; it's math / with consequences, and if it's a kind / of poetry, it's another inexact way, / like time, to measure some sorrow we can't / name." This strong book contains the work of five years by one of the most admired poet-judges, poet-teachers, and poet-participators in this country. Slightly dejected, witty, cynical, yet tolerant, even affectionate, Matthews chooses to tel

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Late in his life, William Matthews left us with Time and Money, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is a meditation on loss and grace that some of us will be thinking about for a long time. "Bob Marley's Hair," which discusses the famed musician's dreadlocks falling out during chemotherapy, is as poignant as, well, "Babe Ruth at the End," the story of Ruth on his deathbed. The real gem, though, is "Dead Languages," a study in how, to use Frost's expression, "way leads on to way." Matthews tosses out fascinating examples of how words have evolved, how "Live English lugs a dead language inside." The way language mutates its way through the world, unconscious of its own changes, Matthews writes, isn't far from our own dimly understood lives: "We did what we did, we're / not proud nor ashamed, we led our lives / or they led us, and how would we know which?" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Things that don't last occupy Matthews in his 10th collection, coming after 1991's Selected Poems and Translations. These 40-plus poems, nearly all previously published, refract irony into an unexpectedly broad spectrum-from the pitch of despair to pale diffidence. Showing a diversity of style, from the incantatory momentum of "My Father's Body," describing the physical processes that follow the death of this "mild, democratic man," to the reflectively grateful notes of "Landscape with Onlooker," Matthews probes what passes-lives, love, certainty and, often, music. Poems about Mingus, Pavarotti, even Bob Marley, weave through the volume's three sections and, like other moments sharply remembered ("In the Boathouse" and "President Reagan's Visit to New York, October 1984") seem to capture the poet's emotional attention at the least remove. Humor, brittle or forgiving, is also generously offered: "that was how I thought/ poetry worked: you digested experience and shat// literature..." he writes about his 17-year-old writing self; yet in a later poem, he gives credit to "...the erotic thrall/ of work as restraint against despair." The best of these poems are powerful, brave and lasting.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; 1st edition (July 19, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395711347
• ISBN-13: 978-0395711347
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,477,976 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Time & Money, October 15, 2004

By 

jqr "Know what free advice is worth" (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time & Money (Hardcover)

Self-Help is one of the most luminous poems I've ever had the pleasure to read. I memorized the whole thing through at one time just so I could enjoy the pleasure of the words falling through my head whenever I wanted to.

Mr. Matthews is the Charlie Parker of verse.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful collection, May 11, 2002

By 

Chelle "Chelle" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time & Money (Paperback)

I have often struggled with simplicity. For a piece of writing to be luminous it must be laden with words, and through all of those words abstraction will make us feel as though the effort marks it as wondrous, right? Perhaps, but Matthews offers only concrete images, words that mask very little but bring beauty to every circumstance they would illuminate. Here, simplicity serves poet and reader very well.

My favorite piece is "Social Notes from All Over: Mt. Olympus"--the classical, fantastical setting is infinitely appealing. Matthews has gods "cross dressing as mortals" ever aware, though just as eager to remain deluded, that all they have is nothing at all. If I paid for this poem alone I would have been satisfied.

There is a great deal of grief in these pages, and more than a little bit of sadness, but as trite as it sounds, there is a sense of elation to be found as well. Poetry should always leave us with some thought, we should think of it fondly, want to recite it if only to ourselves if we can--Matthews affirms all that.