December 12, 2020

Tom McCall Reads Twas the Night Before Christmas

Matt Love NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History

Legendary Oregon Governor Tom McCall reads “Twas The Night Before Christmas.” This was recorded in 1969. Photo by Gerry Lewin.

In perhaps the largest, most eclectic volume of previously unpublished poetry in the history of Pacific Northwest literature, Matt Love presents 148 poems written over a 30-year span.

As he writes in the introduction to A Substantial but Incomplete Autobiography in Poems, “I have organized this collection into six categories: Ocean, Love, My Life, Oregon Tavern Age, Homelessness, Probation. These poems serve as a substantial but incomplete autobiography.”

“Confessionals, odes, scatological doggerel, polemics, tankas, haiku, prose, psalms, requiems, observations, love letters, lamentations, lyrics, stream of consciousness, meditations, lists, riffs, a eulogy, a sermon, a commencement speech, found poetry, tributes, elegies. I threw it all into an ancient cement mixer and hand cranked that concrete beast while watching blue herons undulate overhead and drinking red wine as the husky snoozed in his dirt fort. The result: A Substantial but Incomplete Autobiography in Poems, something merging where Charles Bukowski, Richard Hugo, Mary Oliver and Liz Phair blend together.”

None of Love's poems were ever submitted to poetry journals, contests or magazines, making this collection a true renegade project of passion and readable to any denizen of a coastal dive bar.