Synopsis
This new edition of Clive Matson s early poems includes all of Diane di Prima s Poets Press version 1,000 copies were sold out in 1966-67 and adds significant uncollected pieces from the same period.At once obstreperous and innocent, these poems celebrate a place where emotion, sex, and religion come together with overwhelming intensity. In the fifties and sixties Beat Generation writers were revisiting this edgy, full-blooded romantic tradition and Matson joined the exploration with youthful energy. But the quest was fraught with tension.To Matson s heart and mind, the Beatific vision morphs into something as sinister as it is beautiful, sex is utterly consuming yet fosters hostility, emotion is an exhilarating current as dangerous as a tsunami, drugs are glorious and bring one to the brink of death. Writing these poems were a crucial part of a young person s growth, as demonstrated by the open, accessible style. The poet s overriding concern is understanding the self and the world. Be-bop and cool riffs, common in the Beats, are truncated or undercut in Matson s work, to arrive quickly and precisely at the point.Mainline to the Heart and Other Poems expresses a confluence of personal and historical forces. Clive Matson was coming of age at the same time the culture was at the height of its 1960s explosion. While the poems cast a sobering light on Beat exuberance, Matson s vibrant imagery makes the personal, visionary, and sexual excitement impossible to deny. Steve Weltner writes, These poems speak about desire with an exactitude too excruciating to be pornographic. The power of their eroticism has not diminished.
About the Author
Clive Matson arrived on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1960, a fresh-faced adolescent with a blank notebook under his arm. He quickly fell in with the Beat Generation his first event was a reading at the Tenth Street Coffeehouse, where he met Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Diane di Prima. The atmosphere was stunning. People were aware that new ground was opening every day, and most of the Beat luminaries were in that one small café. Matson had already traveled a long way from the avocado ranch in Southern California where he grew up. He had dropped out of the University of Chicago and hitch-hiked around Europe; his education in life was accelerating.The proto-Beat Herbert Huncke became his second father, and Matson was captivated by John Wieners poetry and subsequently by Alden Van Buskirk s. Diane di Prima published Matson s first poems, and in the introduction John Wieners wrote, One wonders about the nature of love in these poems. Are they vicious, or not? Matson and his first wife Erin Black immersed themselves in sex, hard drugs, and psychedelics of 1960s Bohemian life. Eventually Matson became overwhelmed and returned to the West Coast. He worked for Taxi Unlimited, a producers cooperative in Berkeley; briefly for the Free Clinic and for MOVE (men overcoming violence); and learned the craft of printing from Clifford Burke at Cranium Press. Psychotherapy, Vipassana meditation, and twelve-step programs became fixtures in his life.Space Age (1969) displays his psychedelic years, Heroin (1972) outlines his struggle with addiction, On the Inside (1981) continues the political sight of his communist grandparents, and Equal in Desire (1982) shows feminism instructing his own sexuality. In 1978 he got involved in workshops and found he could make a living teaching creative writing. He returned to school in the 1980s and earned his MFA in poetry at Columbia University. He has taught more than 3,000 workshops nationwide, and his how-to text Let the Crazy Child Write! (New World Library, 1998), honoring the creative unconscious, is being used by a number of groups around the world.Matson co-edited, with the late Allen Cohen, the anthology An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind - Poets on 9/11 (Regent Press, Oakland, 2002), which won the 2003 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award. Earlier that year his seventh book, Squish Boots (2002), was placed, amazingly, in John Wieners coffin.In 2004 a character in one of his unfinished stories began writing poems. His editor said, "Her stuff's junk," and Matson replied, "Get over it. They're not yours." Chalcedony's First Ten Songs (2008) obsess on sexual passion. The poems are an extension of Matson s Beat training, as Chalcedony makes a vibrant call to body and spirit and earth through the sensory world.That Matson ultimately emerged drug-free and healthy gave him full appreciation for 1960s passion and honesty. These qualities are crucially important, he thinks, for the current era. Coming to terms with my youthful, energetic voice has been a challenge, he admits. It helps that I hear, in these poems, both an urgent need to connect and full cognizance of the difficulties. Mostly Matson writes from the itch in his body, and says he always has. He likes playing basketball, table tennis, and collecting minerals in the field. He lives in Oakland, California, where along with ex-wife Gail Ford he co-parents his early teen-age son, Ezra. Visit Clive Matson at matsonpoet.com.
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