The Grace of Distance: Poems - Paperback

by Matthew Thorburn (Author), Ava Leavell Haymon (Editor)

In The Grace of Distance, his poignant, far-traveling new collection of poems, Matthew Thorburn explores the ways in which we try to close the distances we experience in modern life--between doubt and faith, between cultures, between ourselves and those we love. He seeks to name, and find, that elusive, essential sense of connection humanity hungers for. In one poem, a boy places a bell in the hollow of a tree so someone might find it. In others, an overworked baker wishes for an annunciation of her own, while a man calls down into a well until another voice calls back. Set in China and America, in the present and the distant past, Thorburn's poems examine both Eastern and Western ideas of spirituality, looking closely at the ways we can lose faith, then sometimes find it again. The poems also confront the unbridgeable distances we must live with and the perhaps surprising grace they can provide--a greater sense of perspective, understanding, and peace--even as our lives move in the only direction they can, away from the past.

Front Jacket

"Matthew Thorburn's considerable poetic gifts bring the actual world joyfully alive in these poems. But this isn't simple joy; it's joy in conversation with the mounting losses and complexities of middle age. 'I can't remember, ' he writes, 'if I've only just arrived / or it's time for me to go.' In his ekphrastic poem about The Girl with a Pearl Earring (painted in Vermeer's middle age), Thorburn writes, 'Vermeer did // what we all want to do: make time stop / so we can see.' And that is what this book succeeds, beautifully, in doing--stopping time so we can see."--Leslie Harrison, author of The Book of Endings, a finalist for the National Book Award

"Matthew Thorburn's book The Grace of Distance celebrates the quiet moments that pass between people. He writes, '[A] phrase--that's all I'm after... / that catches the quiet hopefulness / of such careful documenting.' Like Vermeer's paintings, Thorburn's graceful poems reach across the distance that divides us all to say, 'We were here. This is what life was like once. / Not bad.' In our age of crisis, this is news that will stay news."
--Tomás Q. Morín, author of Patient Zero

"In his elegant new collection of poems, The Grace of Distance, Matthew Thorburn mines the lyric possibilities of mid-life in loss and love and aliveness. Curiosity fuels insight in keen observations like: 'Did you know one pharaoh / had his heart wrapped in cloth / and placed in a little wooden box / when he died? Who wouldn't / sometimes wish to set your heart / aside and close that lid?' This poet's lyric distances are dreamy and worldly, wise and full of surprises."--Elaine Sexton, author of Prospect/Refuge

Author Biography

Matthew Thorburn is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Dear Almost, winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and son.