subject to change
Published by New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2004.
Selected by Brenda Hillman for the New Issues Poetry Prize, Subject to Change introduces an exciting new voice in poetry. In his debut collection, Matthew Thorburn maps out the territory he will explore throughout his next decade of writing—travel and its attendant sense of dislocation, art and music, nostalgia and love—capturing life's particulars in language that is playful, musical and surprising.
Read a conversation about Subject to Change in Kate Greenstreet's first-book interview series at Kickingwind.com.
Watch a video interview about receiving a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress.
Selected by Brenda Hillman for the New Issues Poetry Prize, Subject to Change introduces an exciting new voice in poetry. In his debut collection, Matthew Thorburn maps out the territory he will explore throughout his next decade of writing—travel and its attendant sense of dislocation, art and music, nostalgia and love—capturing life's particulars in language that is playful, musical and surprising.
Read a conversation about Subject to Change in Kate Greenstreet's first-book interview series at Kickingwind.com.
Watch a video interview about receiving a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress.
Subject to Change is available from Small Press Distribution, Powell's Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and select local booksellers.
Autographed copies available directly from the author via the link at right.
$
14.00
What people are saying about subject to change
"Wallace Stevens once said that poets must love words with all their power to love anything at all. Few first books show as much pleasure in words as Matthew Thorburn's Subject to Change."
—Stephen Burt, The New York Times Book Review
"The examination of personal nostalgia resonates throughout Matthew Thorburn's Subject to Change, and this underlying thread of
sadness and remorse and hopeful expectation—a quest for what might have been and might yet be—makes the emotional edge of these poems burn with brilliant clarity."
—Matthew W. Schmeer, Verse
"And now comes Subject to Change, his first collection of poems. It is a lush, extravagant book, one that resists any easy categories. It is filled with the energy of urgent composition (this poet really believes he should engage the themes of the ages), with genuine humor, and with formal confidence."
—Keith Taylor, Ann Arbor Observer
"Matthew Thorburn's Subject to Change gives us a poetry of the meta-empirical, asking, 'It's not too late, is it?' Exuberant and
crystalline, these poems articulate the problematic beauty of our grand mix-up, our new and comic Dark Ages. The next time a student asks me, 'What’s after Postmodernism?' I'll tell her, 'Read this.'"
—Angela Ball
—Stephen Burt, The New York Times Book Review
"The examination of personal nostalgia resonates throughout Matthew Thorburn's Subject to Change, and this underlying thread of
sadness and remorse and hopeful expectation—a quest for what might have been and might yet be—makes the emotional edge of these poems burn with brilliant clarity."
—Matthew W. Schmeer, Verse
"And now comes Subject to Change, his first collection of poems. It is a lush, extravagant book, one that resists any easy categories. It is filled with the energy of urgent composition (this poet really believes he should engage the themes of the ages), with genuine humor, and with formal confidence."
—Keith Taylor, Ann Arbor Observer
"Matthew Thorburn's Subject to Change gives us a poetry of the meta-empirical, asking, 'It's not too late, is it?' Exuberant and
crystalline, these poems articulate the problematic beauty of our grand mix-up, our new and comic Dark Ages. The next time a student asks me, 'What’s after Postmodernism?' I'll tell her, 'Read this.'"
—Angela Ball
