Water of Joy by Mike Matthews

(3 customer reviews)

$14.99

 

There’s a sweetness at the root of these poems that must come from growing toward the light touch of observation on things fragile and profound, a tenderness in tending light itself as though light were a kind of perception. These poems are happy to be earthly, friendly with abstraction, and able to hold nighthawks for whom darkness is water, and rain that pecks at a hat. This collection, where lives are multiple, where love holds everything up, comforts and celebrates beautifully.

–Kathleen Peirce, author of many beautiful books, most recently, Vault, with New Michigan Press.

 

There’s a certain importance hovering over the images in Mike Matthews’ poetry where reality meets haiku, meets the greatness of the moment, so full of details and hereness. At times you are born lightly into fairy tale worlds close to the one we inhabit. Other times the poems are very explicit and philosophical, even meditative. Perception is sliced and the smell is important and the notion of observing. Metaphysical and philosophical with meta and hereness fluently soaring, these poems also announce the coming of existential angst with a real flair for poetic expression.

–Bengt O. Björklund, author of I Missed Woodstock, Human Error Press, MA, Singing in My Chains Like the Sea, Iconau Publishing, Wales, and I, Middle Creek Publishing, CO.

 

In this collection, Mike Matthews’ poems define the spaces “Between something and the nothing that is also something—” as they navigate between darkness and light, air and water, form and formlessness.   In these undefined spaces where form fades and darkness envelopes both the speaker and his world, Matthews transcends his understanding of self, as a body immersed in water and a spirit learning to be at peace with itself. These poems explore worry and indecision, but ultimately override them with a path to tranquility and an acceptance of simplicity.

–Brian Cordell, author of In Their Final Performance, Finishing Line Press.

 

 

Category:

Description

Water of Joy

by Mike Matthews

$14.99, paper

978-1-64662-214-6

2020

Mike Matthews has been teaching English composition and creative writing courses for community college students in Central Texas College in Killeen, Texas, since 2001.  He has an MFA from Texas State, and he has published several individual poems in hard copy and online journals.  He has published in an anthology, The Book of Hopes and Dreams, put together in Scotland, as well.  He lives with his wife and his stepson in a small town named Copperas Cove in Texas, and he spends as much time as he can staying healthy by swimming as many laps as possible, working on his art skills, playing his saxophone, and writing in a composition book.

 

 

3 reviews for Water of Joy by Mike Matthews

  1. Ann Christine Tabaka (verified owner)

    Mike Mathews’ “Water of Joy” is mystical and soothing, like a meditation practice. It starts with elements and returns to nature. There is a beautiful flow of thought and words that follow. It is a place where something and nothing dance together to become one.

    In “Before Sunrise.”
    “The sphere of light from the lamppost
    diffused by misty fog
    holds back the encroaching dark night.”

    My favorite poem is “Dreambirds.”
    “Nighthawks rarely touch ground
    preferring to swing through moonlight
    to part thick darkness with their crazy
    screeching and sharp dicing wings.”

    “Serenity Whispers” is a beautiful piece with an almost Haiku like feeling.
    “Like whispers,
    the silence of serenity
    surrounds the shell of noise
    my mind hides within.“

    This small chapbook fills big spaces within. It is a book you will want pick up and read whenever you feel contemplative. I recommend this book for all who love poetry and feeling uplifted.

    Ann Christine Tabaka, poet and writer

  2. Jenny Jaeckel (verified owner)

    This collection of beautiful, zen-inspired poems reads straight to the heart, like spare little letters from a friend. Contemplative and with notes of humor, and lines like “soft light dreaming in drops of birds”, make these poems quietly challenge your mind to expand. A real pleasure to read.

  3. Amy Randolph

    There is a beautiful and musical simplicity to these poems and yet, at the same time, there are layers of joy, sadness, and wisdom. Turning each page was like discovering pearls between river stones.

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