De Amerikaanse dichter en essayist William Procter Matthews III werd geboren op 11 november 1942 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Matthews bezocht de Berkshire School en behaalde later een bachelordiploma aan de Yale University en een master aan de University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Naast zijn functie als writer-in-residence aan het Emerson College in Boston, bekleedde Matthews verschillende academische functies bij instellingen zoals de Cornell University, de University of Washington in Seattle, de University of Colorado in Boulder en de University of Iowa. Hij was president van Associated Writing Programs en van de Poetry Society of America. Op het moment van zijn overlijden was hij hoogleraar Engels en directeur van het programma voor creatief schrijven aan het City College van New York. Aan het City College van New York is een lezingenreeks naar hem vernoemd. Tijdens zijn 27 jaar als auteur ontving Matthews beurzen van de Guggenheim Foundation en de National Endowment for the Arts. In 1980 was Matthews poet in residence in The Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire, en in 1997 ontving hij de Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Matthews publiceerde 11 poëziebundels, waaronder “Time & Money”,waarvoor hij in 1996 de National Book Critics Circle Award. Er werden twee postume collecties uitgegeven: “Search Party: Collected Poems” en “After All: Last Poems”.
The Cloister
The last light of a July evening drained
into the streets below: My love and I had hard
things to say and hear, and we sat over
wine, faltering, picking our words carefully.
The afternoon before I had lain across
my bed and my cat leapt up to lie
alongside me, purring and slowly
growing dozy. By this ritual I could
clear some clutter from my baroque brain.
And into that brief vacancy the image
of a horse cantered, coming straight to me,
and I knew it brought hard talk and hurt
and fear. How did we do? A medium job,
which is well above average. But because
she had opened her heart to me as far
as she did, I saw her fierce privacy,
like a gnarled, luxuriant tree all hung
with disappointments, and I knew
that to love her I must love the tree
and the nothing it cares for me.
On A Diet
Eat all you want but don’t swallow it.
—Archie Moore
The ruth of soups and balm of sauces
I renounce equally. What Rorschach saw
in ink I find in the buttery frizzle
in the sauté pan, and I leave it behind,
and the sweet peat-smoke tang of bananas,
and cream in clots, and chocolate. I give
away the satisfactions of food and take
desire for food: I’ll be travelling light
to the heaven of revisions. Why be
adipose: an expense, etc.,
in a waste, etc.? Something like
the body of the poet’s work, with its
pale shadows, begins to pare and replace
the poet’s body, and isn’t it time?
William Matthews (11 november 1942 – 12 november 1997)