Moon Mirrored Indivisible

Reviews / Votes

"In his wide-ranging third collection, Matuk weaves a rich tapestry of human connection, meditating on sex, war, and ancestral inheritance. . . . Matuk writes with admirable confidence and skill." * Publishers Weekly * "Matuk's poems offer an exactness of first-person exposition and exploration. . . Edging his circle of subject matter beyond the immediate domestic and fatherhood of some of that earlier work, the ripples of this current collection still hold at that central core, but move further out into the world, attempting a declarative staccato across a firm lyric, something that has long been present within his work. . . . In clear tones, Matuk articulates his observations across an increasingly hostile culture, from within an America ramped up in rhetoric, domestic terror and foreign wars, and even the purpose of poetry across such divides." * rob mclennan's blog * "Matuk's poems, not as the shape of pleasure or language-as-pleasure but as languaged pleasure, catch us unawares. They are 'susceptible yet undivided,' taking us to the toothed edge but, without sharpness, turning. We move, not sure where from, as a poem, so by the end of a verse, stanza, or book, we have been to places we can't identify on any map, 'turned away / From the heroics and capital of literature' and undone in a sense in a glimmering 'queer air.' Moon Mirrored Indivisible bends, pushing past debris and dams when needed, forceful or stagnant depending on the wind, the pressure, and the height from which words fall." -- Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, author of "Lo Terciario / The Tertiary" "Moon Mirrored Indivisible offers the uncanny sensation of driving brilliantly while blindfolded. The way in which the poems hold together is only part of the exhilaration. Matuk's heightened sense of diction provides absolute physical agency for the reader. He seems to invite the invasion of fantasy at any moment. In this book, the edges of a spiraled collage meet seamlessly, and a liberated 'I' blares out from underneath." -- Cedar Sigo, author of "Siren of Atlantis" "In Matuk's Moon Mirrored Indivisible, mirroring emerges as a magic strategy to create two from one, daring masculinist ancestors to 'scale up.' The poems investigate what can be forged or healed in this approximate doubling, when songbirds 'pull their calls / Out of the noon' and where sympathetic neurons resonate in like melody. Indivisible because, as Stein says, there's no such thing as repetition. Nonetheless, here is a series of stunningly imperfect mirrorings, queer repetitions that have long forgotten 'the mannered European flower code.'" -- Julian Talamantez Brolaski, author of "Of Mongrelitude" "Transcendent work. Words stretch to their limits in Moon Mirrored Indivisible, making a new and necessary language for revolution. In a world preoccupied with occupation, these poems give liberatory breath. Read and allow yourself to be rearranged." -- Marwa Helal, author of "Ante body" and "Invasive species" "What do you not know, how do you become aware of what is unknown? How do you differentiate between a lack of information and an impossible knowledge that depends on experience? One might feel disturbed by a lack of information; one can grow with and through an impossible knowledge. In Farid Matuk's Moon Mirrored Indivisible, the central nervous system of "I" exceeds oneself. The mirror reflects one person-the formal temperament of a poet arranging these words-just as it expands across languages, cultures, and nations. A collective is formed as a series of "I" statements that necessarily indulge and resist solitude. "No empty space but a transom / Between life and word," Matuk writes in "Against Occupation." Embedded in that indulgence, one finds eros; embedded in that resistance, one finds the thresholds knowledge cannot cross. " * Cleveland Review of Books *