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William Matthews beat brain cancer only to keel over from heart failure in 1997, the day after his 55th birthday. A Yale-educated WASP, Matthews mocked the tight-lipped stoicism that was his birthright, while elevating it into high style.
His poem "Wasps" begins with his father sprinting the golf course, "trailing a loud plume/of wasps, slapping himself, jockey and horse." But of course, the game goes on. . . .
while surly welts bloomed on his neck and arms.
"They're not individuals," he complained.
What was I to golf, or golf to me?
I played to keep my father's company.
"They're cells. The nest is the real animal."
That line about keeping his "father's company" pierces me: a sweet longing injected into a cool description of a cool man. In "Men at My Father's Funeral," Matthews opens with the keen fear of death that even the most restrained men exude at funerals.
The ones his age who shook my hand
on their way out sent fear along
my arm like heroin. These weren't
men mute about their feelings,
