Forever & a Day

$6.95

From the back cover

In this debut collection of poems, Forever & a Day, the poet wishes for time to slip away through an open window. It happens for him. Although they are set to the engrained pacing of the calendar, the poems move forward at a standstill, so tight is the poet’s vision and lyrical focus: an ex-girlfriend’s pregnant younger sister. If it sounds taboo enough for rock ’n’ roll, it is. But the confessional pleas are made with equivocation, awkward charm, and judgment tempered by heartfelt compassion. Reading Matt St. Amand’s first collection of poetry is like cataloguing the music he grew up listening to on Detroit radio stations. You can hear the warm analog of crackling vinyl. It’s punctuated with the brutal brief lash of “Pang”; tight and confined refrains that hit like a well-timed drum fill or the atmospheric squawk of strings during a chord change (see “Poem for the Girl I don’t have the guts to talk to”); visceral evocations of places and their people: “The villagers are restless, like agitated mice./Painting their doorways with blood.” The setting is largely nocturnal, at once dream-like and hyperreal. A neighborhood with gambling clowns, propless magicians, politicians and their daredevil drinking companions; where strongmen and wordsmiths play chess, and pipers and illuminati feed the birds…. And the poet whispers verses through timeless midnight windows accessible only by high tree branches. Forever & a Day is a concept album that actually works because it was never recorded. — Bob Stewart, author of Set and Setting