John Matthias. Pages: of recent or...

John Matthias. Pages: of recent origin Poems and Cuttings. Athens, OH: Swallow, 2000

John Matthias one time told a newspaper reporter that "it is ultimately important to write about something more significant than the self [otherwise] we begin to commit to memory poems at the level of the television talk show" A contemplate through almost any popular contemporary literary journal or anthology establishs Matthias all-too-right in claiming that American verse has mired itself in the narrow world of workshop confessionalism, a world not far remov from talk exhibit to exhibitionism. But how to avoid this