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William Matthews (poet)

American poet

For other people named William Matthews, see William Matthews (disambiguation).

William Procter Matthews III (November 11, 1942 – November 12, 1997) was an American poet and essayist.

Life

Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, Matthews attended Berkshire School and later earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University as well as a master's from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.^[1]

In addition to serving as a Writer-in-Residence at Boston's Emerson College, Matthews held various academic positions at institutions including Cornell University, the University of Washington at Seattle, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of Iowa. He served as president of Associated Writing Programs and of the Poetry Society of America.^[2] At the time of his death he was a professor of English and director of the creative writing program at City College of New York.^[3] A reading series has been named for him at City College of New York.^[4]^[5] His sons are Sebas

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"Life happens to us whether we have the good sense to be interested in the way it happens to us or not. That's what it means to be alive."

William Matthews' connection to Ohio was that he was born here, in Cincinnati. Unfortunately, little is published about his personal life until young adulthood -- perhaps because Matthews has purposely avoided the topic in most of his writings: "I'm not a particularly autobiographical poet�I am to some extent bored by the story of my own life."

Matthews earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University and a master's from the University of North Carolina. He began publishing books of poetry in 1970, at the age of twenty-eight (Ruining the New Road), and continued through 1996's Time & Money, which "won the National Book Critics Circle Awards and was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize."

Matthews supplemented his poet's income by teaching and visiting at numerous schools and universities throughout the country: Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; the University of Colorado in Boulder; the University of Iowa; the University

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William Procter Matthews

Died November 12, 1997

An acclaimed poet and respected university professor, Bill Matthews was at the peak of his professional life when he died of a heart attack in New York City a day after his 55th

During his lifetime Bill published ten books of poetry, including Time and Money, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1996. He also won the Modern Poetry Association’s 1997 Ruth Lilly Award for After All: Last Poems, one of two collections of his poems that were published posthumously.

A fellow poet, Karen Swenson, said of Matthews, “ He was one of the most distinguished personal poets of our generation. He wrote his life.”

In the Asheville Poetry Review, Newton Smith, a friend and colleague of Bill’s, wrote: “Matthews’ poems, like his conversation, were a dance of intelligence, a kind of ‘erotic thrall of work as restraint against despair.’ They were improvisations by a master who delighted in the apt turn of phrase but who was aware that intelligence was always being overtaken by mortality…His focus i