Synopses & Reviews
Contemporary Ohio, New York, and Eastern Europe form the backdrop for the beauty and pathos unleashed in these poems. Using the vernacular of his Rust Belt heritage, Mathys builds upon memory and myth in a passionate exploration of culture, faith, sexuality, and artistic creation. Reaffirming poetry’s place in shaping the perceptions of our world, these tensile, incantatory poems find lyric grace in shaping a poetics amidst the fragmentation of society.
Originally from Wooster, Ohio, and a graduate of Carleton College in Minnesota, Ted Mathys has taught English in Hong Kong and worked for the US State Department in Berlin. A 2005 National Endowment for the Arts literary fellow, Mathys now lives and works in New York City.
Synopsis
A muscular debut collection forged with rare confidence and power.
Synopsis
Poetry. Contemporary Ohio, New York, and Eastern Europe form the backdrop for the beauty and pathos unleashed in FORGE. Reaffirming poetry's place in shaping the perceptions of our world, these tensile, incantatory poems find lyric grace in shaping a poetics amidst the fragmentation of society. "With a kind of 'all over' technique, Ted Mathys miraculously forges words onto the page in a kaleidoscopic voiceprint of the present zoom of daily life. This book hums and chortles, sparks and pops out of 'the mouth of your gift horse held / open like a zero"--Peter Gizzi.
About the Author
Ted Mathys is the author Forge and the recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, BOMB, Verse, and elsewhere. An Ohio native, Mathys has lived and worked in Berlin, Hong Kong, and New York and currently studies law and diplomacy at Tufts University.