Rapture & the Big Bam - (Snowbound Chapbook Award) by Matt Donovan (Paperback)

About the Book

With funky tempos and stretched, staggering lines, Matt Donovan's poetic sequence interrogates the ways our daily lives teem with beauty and loss, featuring figures engrained in our culture to portray collisions of pleasure with tragedy, including Scott Joplin, John Singer Sargent, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Babe Ruth, and John Coltrane.

Book Synopsis

With funky tempos and stretched, staggering lines, Matt Donovan's new sequence interrogates the ways our daily lives teem with beauty and loss. He summons figures engrained in American culture to portray collisions of pleasure with tragedy, and to offer evidence for what creation can cost. As "each day lurches us toward ... / things dying, things newborn," the poet of Rapture & the Big Bam can be either a companion in mourning or a celebrant of unbeaten anticipation.

Review Quotes

"The amazing achievement in Matt Donovan's Rapture & the Big Bam is how well he balances the drive to speak intimately with the drive to shape a public (even civic) thought. His ease in following a leading image, trusting entirely that the image will speak far beyond anything he might have planned, makes for an authentic experience of surprise for a reader. His ear and his sense of line are controlled and idiosyncratic, glorious, raging, and fully in love with discovery." - Lia Purpura