From The Sky Inside the Shaking TreeWhat you feelreveals you.Watchfor the sustenanceinclined to a source,enamored of singularity,quickly here and quicklygone, shadow from whichthe body's courage comes.Firefliesapparently stumbling.I slapped one on my leg.Its blood glowed."Blessings for the Hands" follows various speakers - often disabled speakers, who never once figure themselves as objects of complaint - through the haunted dreamscape of "normalcy." Indeed, dreams are continuous presences in this unusually subtle and elegant debut collection that juxtaposes physical circumstances with the vast interior life of the imagination. The subjects of "Blessings for the Hands" are real and imagined confrontations - and reconciliations - between family members, friends, strangers, and animals.Matthew Schwartz's quasi-autobiographical verse complicates and clarifies the emotions waiting just underneath the patterns and expectations of the speakers' daylight lives, where anger, joy, corporeality, and mortality all seem to collide. For Schwartz, poetry is a sleight of hand that keeps the reader guessing through nearly imperceptible shifts between present vision and absent reality. "Blessings for the Hands" is a lyric reckoning of the tension between the life we are given and the life we are determined to lead.

About the Author
Matthew Schwartz is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. He is the recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets and the International Institute of Modern Letters.

Reviews
"The Phoenix Poets list contains a number of poets currently on my list of favorites. This is a strong, vital series that has given voice to some of the best voices in American poetry today." - Billy Collins "Blessings for the Hands is emotionally strong and imaginatively wild, distinctive, deeply moving, without an ort of self-pity, and pervaded by 'compassion down to your fingertips' (which Chekhov said is 'the only method' both to write and to live). This angle of vision is sharp enough to unify much disparate material. The poems are clear and musical and consequently a pleasure to read and reread despite their gravity. I think this may be lasting work." - Michael Ryan"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226740942
Author Matthew Schwartz
Format Hardback
Page Count 72
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 255g
Dimensions(mm) 22mm * 17mm * 1mm