Home – Page 18 – 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In perhaps the largest, most eclectic volume of previously unpublished poetry in the history of Pacific Northwest literature, Matt Love presents 148 poems written over a 30-year span.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.

Recent Scenes From the Rose City

Tennis Lesson

Scooter Woman

Coffee Shop Writing—Dogs!

Bleacher Seats and Salad Days

Bench Man (Part 1)

The Sheltering Sky and Book Chat Man

Cape Sebastian Man

The End of Endings

Oregon Tavern Age: The End

Faces in a Car

A Visit to Oregon City

Things People Living in Homeless Encampments Have That I Wouldn’t Mind Having

The Old Crow Literary Circle

The Putting Green

Corona Virus Thoughts: The Olympic Games

Ass, Fangs and a Tiara

Fuck Off Nosey

Oregon Tavern Age: Red Meat Memory

Oregon Tavern Age: Double Screwdriver Makeout Sunday

The Beer Chaser Blog

Book Chat Man’s Review

The Ultimate Literary Happiness

Saturday Afternoon Thoughts

Over Under Pate

American Entitlement, New and Old

Oregon Tavern Age: Masturbation Video

Things I’ve Learned From Living Temporarily Seven Months in Portland

The Dark Tone

Recent Scenes from the Homeless

Footloose and Slaughterhouse-Five

Marine Drive Golf and Homeless Novel

A Homeless Man Reads Ivanhoe

Oregon Tavern Age: Fourth of July

Some Meditations on the 4th of July, 2021

Oregon Tavern Age: Keep on Rockin’ In the Free World

The Television Antenna

Things to Do in 111-degree Heat

Ode to Uncle Pinball (On the Death of My Uncle Dale)

Curriculum by Juxtaposition