David MatthewsApr 63 minNotes from the journal Monday evening 11 pmMaybe it is time again to take up the pen in the night's dark hours as I once did, a young fellow home from the night shift at Tall Tales...
David MatthewsMar 2016 minForthright and Fearless: Mary McCarthy's Intellectual MemoirsI knew next to nothing about Mary McCarthy (1912–1989), the name only, as author of The Groves of Academe and The Group, novels I had not...
David MatthewsOct 23, 20216 minDispatch from the BunkerThe president and the congressional Democratic brain trust may yet pull from their nether regions something to pass in tandem with the...
David MatthewsSep 22, 202116 minThinking about What Surrealism Holds for MeThese days when I confront the wild blank page or the keyboard and the void of the white screen as I set off in search of the poem, I...
David MatthewsJul 31, 202124 minRevisiting On the Road: The Original Scroll RouteI first read Jack Kerouac in 1970. I was eighteen. For the next ten years or so I was heavily into Kerouac and the Beats, reading and...
David MatthewsMay 21, 202119 minLiterary Adventure with Larry McMurtryWe were taught to make outlines in high school, maybe before that, as far back as fifth or sixth grade at Dutch Fork Elementary. Although...
David MatthewsApr 9, 202111 minThe Writer at WorkW.S. Merwin wrote in a poem that he once asked John Berryman how you can ever be sure that what you write is really any good, to which...
David MatthewsDec 12, 20209 minMy encounter with Alexander Herzen: reflections on a life in a turbulent age (part I)It is just barely possible that we are not the first to live in a turbulent age. Alexander Herzen was born in Moscow a few months before...
David MatthewsOct 18, 20207 minMary McCarthy and The GroupI knew of Mary McCarthy and her novels The Group and The Groves of Academe but had not read her until I was intrigued by her depiction in...
David MatthewsAug 14, 20206 minThe rewards of writing...what?! there are rewards?A friend from the poetry scene who is now a comic book writer asked what I find rewarding but different in various sorts of writing I...
David MatthewsJul 7, 202015 minThe Pope project part II: on to PopeThe Pope project kicked off in earnest with Maynard Mack's formidable biography and a selection of poems that included An Essay on...
David MatthewsJun 29, 20208 minThe Pope (Alexander the poet, not the pontiff) project part I: why bother?The work of great poetry is to aid us to become free artists of ourselves. —Harold Bloom The English poetry tradition, what is now in...
David MatthewsNov 13, 201916 minOut on the left bank of the spirit (Part II)When the intellectuals became celebrities and women swooned. On October 29, 1945, Jean-Paul Sartre gave a lecture at Club Maintenant in...
David MatthewsNov 12, 201913 minOut on the left bank of the spirit (Part I)Paris in the 1940s. Occupation. Resistance. Liberation, existentialism, jazz. Cafés and hotel rooms were hotbeds of intellectual,...
David MatthewsJul 8, 20195 minThe pains in the ass of Rocco SchiavoneAosta is a town of some 34,000 in the Italian Alps between France and Switzerland. It is here that deputy police chief Rocco Schiavone...
David MatthewsJan 25, 201910 minOf Poets and Critics and the Passing of Mary OliverThe outpouring of affection for poet Mary Oliver (1935–2019) in the days following her death has been remarkable. Some pretty big names...
David MatthewsJan 12, 20196 minAmusements and DiversionsMy old friend Chuck Oliveros called to chat. The conversation commenced with baseball, specifically the pursuit of free agents Bryce...
David MatthewsDec 31, 20184 minTaking Stock at Year's End 2018The first full calendar year of retirement is in the books. The real work goes on as I try to keep faith with the dream of being a poet I...
David MatthewsNov 15, 20183 minOn Reading Poetry with Harold BloomI strove with none, for none was worth my strife. Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art: I warmed both hands before the fire of life;...
David MatthewsSep 14, 20184 minThe Fall Term 2018Autumn is in the air, as they say. The week has seen daily showers and temperatures no higher than 70. The change of season stirs that...