Hidden Motion by Matthew James Babcock

The poems in Matthew Babcock‘s Hidden Motion are paeans to the velvet swoosh of all things that move. From maxims of commotion and flamingo pick-up lines to Whitmanesque list poems and short discourses on species, these poems remind us that language was put here to pulse and to surge, to wake and ensoul. The Babcockian lyric combines a heady, distinctive inquisitiveness with mountainous heart mojo. Indeed, the core of this book renders lessons in tending a heart tethered to all living things. In terms of sheer sonic ecstasy, these poems are thrilling: “So many toros / under the mazarine wound of the moon. / So many rivers overgrown in green interludes.” There are traces of Gerard Manley Hopkins (“verve of a mad impressionist, / the cloudburst crashing, grazing grey pavement”) and Wallace Stevens (“the day was a smudged symphony of silver”), as well as strains of the blues. By the end of this masterful book, I felt wholly remade of its musics.

–Diane Raptosh, author of Dear Z: The Zygote Epistles