Improvisation Without Accompaniment

By: Matt Morton, Patricia Smith (Foreword by)

Write A Review

Paperback | 21 January 2020

At a Glance

Paperback
88 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.8 x 15.2

Paperback

$36.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $9.19 with

or

Ships in 10 to 15 business days

"Expert and instinctive, like a cool Ed Wilkerson sax solo bouncing with lived rhythms. Morton''s consummate poems will echo long after they are read." —Booklist

Selected by Patricia Smith as winner of the 2018 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, Matt Morton's debut poetry collection Improvisation Without Accompaniment embraces uncertainty with a spirit of joyous playfulness.

These lyric poems follow the rhythms of life for a young man growing up in a small Texas town. As the speaker wrestles with ruptures within the nuclear family and the loss of his religious beliefs, he journeys toward a deeper self-awareness and discovers a fuller palette of experiences. Over the course of this collection, the changing seasons of small-town Texas life give way to surprise encounters in distant cities. The speaker's awareness of mortality grows even as he improvises an affirming response to life's toughest questions.

Poignant, searching, and earnestly philosophical, Improvisation Without Accompaniment reaches for meaning within life's joys and griefs.

Industry Reviews

"What follows are poems of arresting insight and stark assurance. What follows are the agile lines of someone who has mastered the sudden slap, the hushed lyric."
-Patricia Smith, from the Foreword

"What stands in the back of Matt Morton's beautiful and disturbing Improvisation Without Accompaniment is a persistent emotional attachment to literary and religious traditions in which the speaker of these poems intellectually disbelieves. Familial trauma and a foundering romance become occasions for a book-length compelling meditation on our particular moment in history, on the enduring value of person-to-person connection in a world whose ever-accelerating pace of change complicates and deepens the very needs it promises to satisfy."
-Alan Shapiro

"Matt Morton must not have gotten the memo that American poetry is in an extinction event. These are poems of immense intelligence and presence as nimble as flames conveying the nearly unbearable intimacy this life demands, threatens and rewards us with."
-Dean Young

Shipping

	Standard Shipping	Express Shipping
Metro postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Regional postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Rural postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95

Orders over $79.00 qualify for free shipping.

How to return your order

At Booktopia, we offer hassle-free returns in accordance with our returns policy. If you wish to return an item, please get in touch with Booktopia Customer Care.

Additional postage charges may be applicable.