“Many cultures have had names for seers like Matt Rader. Contemporary Western culture has none. This is the book of a man who has died more than once and who carries with him knowledge of the point where being’s blaze touches nothingness. A book of profound humility and intense vision.” —Jan Zwicky
Ghosthawk is a guidebook of imagination from grasslands to star fields to the weather of the poet’s body. Where’s home in the crises of ecological collapse and mortal illness? Where’s joy with constant pain, a future blurred by smoke? Carrying these questions, Matt Rader wrote down the names of the wildflowers he met in the mountains, canyons and woodlands of his home in the Okanagan Valley. These poems are what he learned, the directions as he can best describe them.
“Many cultures have had names for seers like Matt Rader. Contemporary Western culture has none. This is the book of a man who has died more than once and who carries with him knowledge of the point where being’s blaze touches nothingness. A book of profound humility and intense vision.” —Jan Zwicky
Ghosthawk is a guidebook of imagination from grasslands to star fields to the weather of the poet’s body. Where’s home in the crises of ecological collapse and mortal illness? Where’s joy with constant pain, a future blurred by smoke? Carrying these questions, Matt Rader wrote down the names of the wildflowers he met in the mountains, canyons and woodlands of his home in the Okanagan Valley. These poems are what he learned, the directions as he can best describe them.
Matt Rader is an award-winning author of four volumes of poetry and a collection of stories, What I Want to Tell Goes Like This (Nightwood Editions, 2014). His work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry, Geist, The Walrus, Wales Arts Review, The Fiddlehead and The Malahat Review. Rader is a core member of the Department of Creative Studies at UBC Okanagan where he lectures in creative writing. He lives in Kelowna, BC.
"Many cultures have had names for seers like Matt
Rader. Contemporary Western culture has none. This is the book of a
man who has
died more than once and who carries with him knowledge of the point
where
being's blaze touches nothingness. A book of profound humility and
intense
vision." --Jan Zwicky, author of Songs for Relinquishing the
Earth "Ghosthawk is a field
guide to wildflowers, birds, marriage, feeling--the "sudden animal"
entering the
poet's sightline. These astonishing poems tender the world's
fullness, heavy
with each, alight with looking: mariposa lily, snowberry, yarrow,
yellowthroat,
a body in peril, jewels of rain. From the ghosthawk of the title
"circling /
the white arrow / of its body smaller / and smaller away" to a
sequence of
islanded couplets turning on a lonely offset rhyme, the poems
render the
nuances and forebodings of feeling, and a singular farewell. Oh,
they crackle
with keen noticing and the living, vibrant world, but there's soul
ache too.
Mirages and vanishing. "Yes, you can hear / moonlight / shatter." A
haunting
dissolution and nearly unbearable fragility lie at the heart of
this
collection. Yet it is distinguished by--and I find myself repaired
by--its
generous radiance. This is an exquisite book: soul rich with regret
and wonder,
magnifying."--Geri Doran, author of Resin "It's honestly, no
bullshit, one of the most
beautiful books I've ever read. Ghosthawk speaks to me on a
profound level."--Jordan Scott, author of I Talk Like A River
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