Clive Matson’s poetry has been praised by luminaries from Robert Bly (“important, open and delicate”) to Diane DiPrima (“powerful and tender… speak(s) directly to the heart”) and Susan Griffin (“delightful and penetrating… a revelation”). All volumes of his work are available either through Amazon or directly from the author, along with his life-changing guide to developing personal creativity, Let the Crazy Child Write!
HELLO, PARADISE.
PARADISE, GOODBYE.
"Smoke. Screw. Fly. Let the eighteen-wheeler that is your mind follow the syncopated beat of Hello, Paradise. Paradise, Goodbye.... This epic poem blends images gathered over a lifetime into a concerned interrogation of the society that inspired it. As you walk down Eden's sidewalk, you will question if life has always been this way, and then you will understand that it has not. The voice of the speaker shows a love for humankind and a reverence for the great Gaia, but a condemnation for the soullessness oozing out from our corporate pores." Andrew Halsig, poet and publisher ofCrooked Teeth.
LET THE CRAZY CHILD WRITE!
Clive's signature text celebrates the role of the creative unconscious or Crazy Child in stories, poems, plays, and essays. Examples show how the Crazy Child informs our writing and gives it texture and flair, and a plethora of exercises allow you to demonstrate for yourself the power of the knowledge in your own body. (More)
CHALCEDONY'S FIRST TEN SONGS
These poems are a vibrant call to body and spirit and earth through the sensory world. Extravagant, rich and powerful - it’s as if Clive Matson’s early voice lost its anger and returns to embrace sensual life in all its joys and pains. (More)
CHALCEDONY'S SECOND TEN SONGS
In this book the poet broadens the exultant, erotic outburst of her first chapbook. She adds existentialism, science, and much attitude to these conversations – or rather, to these rants – at her lover. Chalcedony (kal-SAID-‘n-ee) has no doubt he needs a lot of educating! (More)
MAINLINE TO THE HEART AND OTHER POEMS (2009 edition)
At once obstreperous and innocent, these poems celebrate a place where emotion, sex, and religion come together with overwhelming intensity. In the fifties and sixties Beat Generation writers were revisiting this edgy, full-blooded romantic tradition and Matson joined the exploration with youthful energy. But the quest was fraught with tension. (More)
AN EYE FOR AN EYE MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND
WINNER of the 2003 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award
As the swords of war were being rattled, an archive of American poets’ responses to 9/11 and its aftermath was collected and published in AN EYE FOR AN EYE MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND – POETS ON 9/11. Edited by Allen Cohen and Clive Matson, with a foreword by political analyst Michael Parenti, this anthology presents 120 poems by more than 100 poets. (More)
SQUISH BOOTS
Open this book and fall into a tumultuous world where each act sings, shouts and cries the full chorus of the unconscious. Matson uses kaleidoscopic images that infiltrate our work-a-day defenses and invite our deepest feelings and truths to surface – like taking a roller coaster ride with an old sage/young boy, hair streaming white, knuckles clenched, eyes closed, laughing. And when you open those eyes – there – what do you see? (More)
HOURGLASS
“What we call ‘I’ is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale,” observes Shunryu Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Each piece in Hourglass describes how it feels to become that swinging door — or to wrestle with thoughts that would jam it. The poet engages in a long, entertaining and unwinnable battle with his own mind. As his understanding grows, consciousness becomes at once commonplace and full of wonder. (More)
EQUAL IN DESIRE
"Matson’s work is powerful and tender. He has a clarity which is deceptive: the seeming simplicity that comes from a thoughtful and complex technique. The poems speak direct to the heart." ~ Diane DiPrima (More)
SPACE AGE
This is the second book by the author of Mainline to The Heart, presenting an advance in theme and language which proves him one of the top four or five young poets in the country. Space Age is the poetry of vision, a unique synthesis deriving as much from Bob Dylan as from Whitman, amounting to a breadth uncommon in contemporary poetry. (More)
HEROIN
The third published full work by Clive Matson is Heroin, a poetic expression of the effects of heroin use and addiction experienced by Matson during his years with the Beat Generation in New York City. (more)