Matthew Olzmann Q&A on a current poetry project
Matthew Olzmann talks about a poetry project on which he’s currently working.
Matthew Olzmann
Matthew Olzmann Q&A with advice to young poets
Matthew Olzmann offers some advice to young poets.
Elegy Where Small Towns Are Obscured by Mountains
I get news of an old friend’s suicide while I’m on the highway, in the middle of moving from one state to another. Questions race by like cars in the other direction: God, and Why? and When? and How? and then, more difficult, one that won’t become words, like a door where the hinge […]
Matthew Olzmann
Matthew Olzmann’s first book of poems, Mezzanines (Alice James Books, 2013), was selected for the Kundiman Prize. His second book, Contradictions in the Design, was published by Alice James in 2016. He’s received scholarships and fellowships from Kundiman and the Kresge Arts Foundation. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in Kenyon Review, New England […]
The Man Who Was Mistaken
No, I’m not the Associate Dean for Faculty: Teaching and Learning, you’re thinking of Gary Hawkins, is what I told the second student this week who thought I was Gary. Gary: who, like me, is bald and wears glasses. Gary: who once, ten years ago, was mistaken for Moby. Moby: who, like me, is […]
Letter to a Bridge Made of Rope
I don’t trust you. To the shepherd, herding his flock through the gorge below, it must appear as if I walk on the sky. I feel like that too: so little between me and The Fall. But this is how faith works its craft. One foot set in front of the other, while the […]
Nate Brown is Looking for a Moose
Shrouded in fog, dignified and reticent: a moose. When Ross White goes outside in Vermont, he sees one immediately. When Jamaal May goes outside, he sees one as well. As if they are everywhere. But when Nate Brown goes outside, he sees only the absence of a moose, spaces where one might have […]