Forge
Poems by Ted Mathys

"This is some first book! It opens with a haunting twist on the creation myth, and keeps on opening into big poems that are architecturally complex and socially attentive. Mathys has set them all in a languagescape of juxtapostion and refrain. These poems leap—sometimes dizzyingly—but they always land, and always on some new conneciton, lighting it up."—Cole Swensen

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 a fragmented society.

Also Available by this Author:

• The Spoils