Lila MATSUMOTO
THREE songs
THREE songs
A WINTER 2021
POETRY BOOK
SOCIETY
RECOMMENDATION
Published by Prototype, Lila MATSUMOTO’s new collection TWO TWIN PIPES SPROUT WATER brings together five discrete sequences of poems and poem-stories. Looking to the fictive possibilities of poetry—and poetry’s affinities with song —MATSUMOTO’s verse explores the theme of contingency: as individuated, ordinary-extraordinary moments, as broader cultural milieu, and as resonances of social and environmental inequity.
Rooted in descriptions of objects and nature, these illustrative poems offer a sense of the world as an observed tableau, inviting the reader in as an involved and knowing participant in the creation of a strange yet familiar world.
Moving through different voices and times, landscapes and interiors, MATSUMOTO’s poetry is one of energetic precision, alert to the subtleties of rhythm and to the inherently visual nature of poetry, embracing the hybrid potential of the form.
Rooted in descriptions of objects and nature, these illustrative poems offer a sense of the world as an observed tableau, inviting the reader in as an involved and knowing participant in the creation of a strange yet familiar world.
Moving through different voices and times, landscapes and interiors, MATSUMOTO’s poetry is one of energetic precision, alert to the subtleties of rhythm and to the inherently visual nature of poetry, embracing the hybrid potential of the form.
PLAINSONG
The kindness of the day
and no one knows where she came from
or what will take place within her
In this way she moves the shorebound waves
and the hopeful minds of the travellers
Here they built a monument to her
the ox and the plough and the seedjar
the harrow and the sickle and the flail
the quern and the oven
Despite a canvas almost windless
the scroll unfurls to tell the passage
Pleasure and hardship, syllable and texture
The sea thrums the dulsen reef
BY LIKENESS
Passing through the menu, buttering old bets. You and them
and the silent parsley.
Music is flesh juice, is a kind of two-scene milk. Believe me when
I tell you that nothing is full savoury.
You broach glib and ordinary questions. You are pressing them
into service. Biscuits, blue peppers, previous beans... it’s like
consuming blind without any sign from the baker.
Peace is lemon-thin, because the mouth is always sprouting.
Human yourself better! Not by ability but by likeness, a fare cut
down to shape. I know your work, that you are neither cold nor
hot. I wish you would be cold or hot. I am searching for
information recognisable as change.
OR NEW
Shaded gold, morning’s deliberate sequence
stitched so the metal shows through
Foregrounds small upright figures
and a glade seaming with sorrel
The entire design
declared in unabated sophistry
Cloth is lighter where the sun baffles its border
The closer together the steps are
the denser or stronger the colour
ORDER A COPY
FROM THE PUBLISHER
HERE ...
IMAGE—
(top left)
From Harry CALLAHAN, PHOTOGRAPHS IN COLOR:
THE YEARS 1946-1978
(The Centre for Creative Photography,
The University of Arizona, 1980)
Lila MATSUMOTO’s publications include the poetry collection URN & DRUM (Shearsman, 2018) and the chapbooks SOFT TROIKA (If a Leaf Falls Press, 2016) and ALLEGORIES FROM MY KITCHEN (Sad Press, 2015). She teaches poetry and creative-critical writing at the University of Nottingham and plays in the bands FOOD PEOPLE and CLOTH.
See lilamatsumoto.com.