Dear Almost is a book-length poem addressed to an unborn child lost in miscarriage. Beginning with the hope and promise of springtime, poet Matthew Thorburn traces the course of a year with sections set in each of the four seasons. Part book of days, part meditative prayer, part travelogue, the poem details a would-be father’s wanderings through the figurative landscapes of memory and imagination as well as the literal landscapes of the Bronx, Shanghai, suburban New Jersey, and the Japanese island of Miyajima.
As the speaker navigates his days, he attempts to show his unborn daughter “what life is like / here where you ought to be / with us, but aren’t.” His experiences recall other deaths and uncover the different ways we remember and forget. Grief forces him to consider a question he never imagined asking: how do you mourn for someone you loved but never truly knew, never met or saw? In candid, meditative verse Dear Almost seeks to resolve this painful question, honoring the memory of a child who both was and wasn’t there.

Dear Almost: A Poem (Barataria Poetry)

Literature & Fiction

Thorburn, Matthew

Poetry

LSU Press

In The Grace of Distance, his poignant, far-traveling new collection of poems, Matthew Thorburn explores the ways in which we try to close the distances we experience in modern life?between doubt and faith, between cultures, between ourselves and those we love. He seeks to name, and find, that elusive, essential sense of connection humanity hungers for. In one poem, a boy places a bell in the hollow of a tree so someone might find it. In others, an overworked baker wishes for an annunciation of her own, while a man calls down into a well until another voice calls back. Set in China and America, in the present and the distant past, Thorburn?s poems examine both Eastern and Western ideas of spirituality, looking closely at the ways we can lose faith, then sometimes find it again. The poems also confront the unbridgeable distances we must live with and the perhaps surprising grace they can provide?a greater sense of perspective, understanding, and peace?even as our lives move in the only direction they can, away from the past.

The Grace of Distance: Poems (Barataria Poetry)

A book-length sequence of poems, Matthew Thorburn’s String tells the story of a teenage boy’s experiences in a time of war and its aftermath. He loses his family and friends, his home and the life he knew, but survives to tell his story. Written in the boy’s fractured, echoing voice―in lines that are frequently enjambed and use almost no punctuation―String embodies his trauma and confusion in a poetic sequence that is part lullaby, part nightmare, but always a music that is uniquely his.

String (Barataria Poetry)

In This Time Tomorrow, Matthew Thorburn searches for his own particular answers to some fundamental questions: Why do we travel? Why seek out new places and cultures, only to have to leave them? Whether writing about Japan, China, or Iceland, Thorburn brings his sharp eye and musical ear to the poet's work: honoring with words the mysteries and wonders - life's essential strangeness - to be found in whatever landscape we choose to wander.

This Time Tomorrow

Waywiser Pr

Poetry. "Matthew Thorburn's SUBJECT TO CHANGE gives us a poetry of the meta-empirical, asking, `It's not too late, is it?' Exuberant and crystalline, these poems articulate the problematic beauty of our grand mix-up, our new and comic Dark Ages. The next time a student asks me, `What's after Postmodernism?' I'll tell her, `Read this.'"--Angela Ball

Subject to Change (New Issues Poetry & Prose)

New Issues Poetry and Prose

Every Possible Blue

WordTech Communications

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