The Millennial Pedestrian

Open to Everything

In memory of Bill Matthews

“To the second-best writer I know,”
he scribbled on the title page of my copy of
“Blues if You Want.”
Try to imagine something more flattering.

“What it sets out to accomplish,
it does very well,” he said
of an especially unambitious poem
I had just read in his workshop.

At Yale, he tooled around
in a sporty Datsun Fairlady.
Bill doted on the car, although
its name taxed his urbanity.

Despite an ostensible lankiness,
Bill was paunchy, not a graceful athlete,
but he’d play the occasional pickup game.
He moved well, for a poet.

He loved the subversive.

In his workshop the week after he died,
we tried to decide if Bill made us feel
inadequate or brilliant.
Some were awed by his intellect;
others empowered by his equable openness
to even the most awkward stanza.

In fact, he was open to everything,
and shared what he found.
Trockenbeerenauslese, for example.
Not so much the wine
as its Teutonic tumble of syllables.
His recipe for Pepper Shrimp
is on the menu tonight,
and though I’ve never quite penetrated
the mystery of Mingus,
I’m open to it.