Mainline to the Heart And Other Poems
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Synopsis:
This new edition of Clive Matson's early poems includes all of Diane di Prima's Poets Press version 1,000 copies were sold out in 1966-67 and adds significant uncollected pieces from the same period. At once obstreperous and innocent, these poems celebrate a place where emotion, sex, and religion come together with overwhelming intensity. In the fifties and sixties Beat Generation writers were revisiting this edgy, full-blooded romantic tradition and Matson joined the exploration with youthful energy. But the quest was fraught with tension. To Matson's heart and mind, the Beatific vision morphs into something as sinister as it is beautiful, sex is utterly consuming yet fosters hostility, emotion is an exhilarating current as dangerous as a tsunami, drugs are glorious and bring one to the brink of death. Writing these poems were a crucial part of a young person's growth, as demonstrated by the open, accessible style. The poet's overriding concern is understanding the self and the world. Be-bop and cool riffs, common in the Beats, are truncated or undercut in Matson s work, to arrive quickly and precisely at the point. Mainline to the Heart and Other Poems; expresses a confluence of personal and historical forces. Clive Matson was coming of age at the same time the culture was at the height of its 1960s explosion. While the poems cast a sobering light on Beat exuberance, Matson's vibrant imagery makes the personal, visionary, and sexual excitement impossible to deny. Steve Weltner writes, These poems speak about desire with an exactitude too excruciating to be pornographic. The power of their eroticism has not diminished.
Book Excerpt:
Teardrop In My Eye.
© 1966 Clive Matson
Fuck you, Huncke.
Leave me
hung up for junk, waiting
alone in a dark room candles
you lit burn down in.
They unwind curls of smoke
like incense I remember we offered
weeks ago.
It is Nostalgia.
I treat you mean
and I get what's coming
down on Lonely Street.
I walk amid cold winds,
leaves
rustle
while I blow.
No one to hold my hand.
Tompkins Park ~
a violet night sky looms,
one icy star in it. Is it
Venus?
And on 3 sides
fountains I see thru squinty eyes
squirt white geysers like cocks:
streetlamps seen thru tears.
Wish you were here
& cruise empty benches
for the familiar body.
What's the use.
Turn a corner, God
I'm relieved! Gone the terror.
No more hairy lump between thighs or
mornings he slunk away
thru dawn's pale blue light as
as I reach long arms
for hugging.
& grasp a rumpled blanket.
I hoped for joy.
Why did he go?
This affair started with a smile that
opened caverns in his skull
When he gave me a blue china bowl.
For weeks after
we took off
together jiving our way along
for outer space as
only we can. Will we
space out once more.
Have I got heart for it,
Now I'm free I can
go to Chatham Square a vulture,
follow the fading rumors he left
behind with me. & these memories
I would live again.
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Original Publish Date:
March 1, 2009
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