William Matthews: "On the Porch at the Frost Place, Franconia, N.H."

The VPR Poem of the Week is “On the Porch at the Frost Place, Franconia, N.H.” by William Matthews, which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2002-2003 issue (Volume IV, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

William Matthews taught and lectured all over the United States. He served as the president of the Poetry Society of America and of the Associated Writing Programs, as well as chair of the Literature Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1997, he was awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize. His dozen collections of poetry include Ruining the New Road (1970), Sleek for the Long Flight: New Poems (1972), Rising and Falling (1979), Blues If You Want (1989), Selected Poems and Translations 1969-1991 (1992), and Time & Money (1996), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

After All: Last Poems (1998) and Search Party: Collected Poems (2004), a volume of his work edited by Sebastian Matthews and Stanley Plumly, were released posthumously. An extended review of William Matthews’s poetry appeared in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue (Volume VI, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. At the time of his death in 1997 Matthews was a professor of English and director of the writing program at the College of the City University of New York.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an exceptional work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.