Time and Money: New Poems

Things that don't last occupy Matthews in his 10th collection, coming after 1991's Selected Poems and Translations. These 40-plus poems, nearly all previously published, refract irony into an unexpectedly broad spectrum-from the pitch of despair to pale diffidence. Showing a diversity of style, from the incantatory momentum of ``My Father's Body,'' describing the physical processes that follow the death of this ``mild, democratic man,'' to the reflectively grateful notes of ``Landscape with Onlooker,'' Matthews probes what passes-lives, love, certainty and, often, music. Poems about Mingus, Pavarotti, even Bob Marley, weave through the volume's three sections and, like other moments sharply remembered (``In the Boathouse'' and ``President Reagan's Visit to New York, October 1984'') seem to capture the poet's emotional attention at the least remove. Humor, brittle or forgiving, is also generously offered: ``that was how I thought/ poetry worked: you digested experience and shat// literature...'' he writes about his 17-year-old writing self; yet in a later poem, he gives credit to ``...the erotic thrall/ of work as restraint against despair.'' The best of these poems are powerful, brave and lasting. (July)