Home – Page 15 – Nestucca Spit Press Meditations Blog

In perhaps the largest, most eclectic volume of previously unpublished poetry in the history of Pacific Northwest literature, Matt Love presents 148 poems written over a 30-year span.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

Notes for a Short Story

Conversation in a Coin Shop

A New Poet for Oregon—Lee Meier

Pendleton: A Short Story

For the Good of the Writing Order

Oregon Tavern Age: Trails Inn

Hummingbirds in the Apple Tree

Sunday Morning Walk

More Nail Shop Meditations

Fast Break (Part 5)

Fast Break (Part 4)

Fast Break (Part 3)

Fast Break (Part 2)

Fast Break (Part 1)

On Instant Judgment

The 90s

Cosmic Forces?

Oregon Tavern Age: MIA

A Dandelion

Denis Johnson and a Writing Methodology for the Homeless Crisis

Oregon Tavern Age: Roz is Gone

Final Corona Virus Thoughts

The Case of the Sinister Slice

Killing Time

May 7 Writing Workshop in Portland: “Firing Up Your Writing Project”

Oregon Tavern Age: Revenge of the Watershed

Rewatching All the President’s Men

Sweet Socialism Birthday

Oregon Tavern Age: Birthday

Twenty Years of Nestucca Spit Press

Sartre on My Writing Mind

Oregon Tavern Age: Blow Job (the drink)

Walking in Snow

Signature Gatherer

Empire Records

The Storytelling Genius of Gunsmoke

Oregon Tavern Age: Brownsville Newspaper

An Orb of Beaverwood

Nail Shop Meditations (2)

A Philosophy of Walking