Simulacra (Volume 111) (Yale Series of Younger Poets)

These poems have an intelligence that is all their own. definitely one to read 2,3 times. The one poem set in the father's mouth almost took me out! Brilliant.

Airea Dee Matthews's debut is one of the most indubitably groundbreaking and hard-hitting poetry collections of the 21st century. In a deeply gothic form of feminism, Matthews explores various aspects of domestic depression in ingenious and fresh ways exclusive to 21st century lifestyle, such as phone texts or musical play scripts. Matthews interacts with her odd inhibitions through personas of her dead inspirations, including Gertrude Stein and Anne Sexton. Matthews's intuitive wit, darkly satirical humor, and a scathing gravity all intertwine to configure one of the most innovative works of 21st century literature, that may affect the way poets write about the world(s) around them for years to come.

Virtuosic in form and language, Airea D. Matthews’s SIMULACRA reimagines numerous forms of communication, in lineated and prose poems haunted by ghosts and gods, both Egyptian and Greek, and the fragile imagined pasts we regard as memory and history, Matthews playfully and dynamically offering redacted epistles and beyond-the-grave sexting, dismantlings of so-called holy scripture, and various engagements with texts from a panoply of writers, including Jean Baudrillard, Anne Sexton, Gertrude Stein, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Matthews creates art that transcends history and form to birth a new vision of the world that challenges authority, complacency and even mortality. Her collection reminds us that words are more than sounds with meaning, for Matthews they are the animating force behind ideas and therefore life. If you do not come prepared to receive, read Simulacra at your own peril. It will make you see, feel and believe in a way you never thought possible.

Matthews creates a collection of provocative, thought provoking and insightful intense imagery for the reader.