Matt Hart, second from right, in the band Squirtgun

 

After my piece on Matt Hart, I heard from both. The following letter, run here with its author’s permission, is from the Matt Hart with whom I read in New York.

Dear Mr. Silliman,

Imagine my surprise to find, upon arriving home from work the other day, that I (and my doppelganger) had been mentioned in your blog-posting for the day. How strange. But also, as it turns out, how terrific.

As it turns out, I have been aware of your Matt Hart for some time. A few years ago, when I was introduced to Dana Ward, the poet and editor of Cy Press, he immediately started going on and on about how much he liked some very astute sounding article I had written. Sadly, I had to tell him, he had the wrong Matt Hart. Thus, when Thomas said that you were very happy to be reading with ME and Anselm Berrigan, I just assumed (because you live in Philly) that you thought he meant YOUR Matt Hart. Very confusing. Of course, at the actual event I was far too nervous and in awe of you to mention it. And I’m glad you didn’t mention it either, as I would’ve been even more terrified than I was already. I had never read in New York before, and as goofy as it probably seems, it was a big deal to me.

In any case, I appreciated very much your thoughtful comments about my work, though I must say I’m not at all certain what you’re talking about when you say School of Quietude, nor do I know anything about Actualism. Forgive me. I’m neither well read nor particularly articulate in terms of the detailed history of poetry. I am, however, like everybody else who’s serious about something, always looking to both the past and present for new input, new words, new ideas. With that in mind, I plan to research some of the poets you mentioned in your post, and I would be grateful for any other suggestions you may have for further reading. Of course, I do know Ted Berrigan’s work quite well, and Dean Young was briefly a teacher of mine. In the early 90’s, when I was a grad student in philosophy (horror of horrors), I studied the later Wittgenstein pretty intensely, and thankfully it cured me of any desire I had to understand the world absolutely (though not my desire to pine for the possibility of an absolute)—I bought his whole “philosophy is a mental illness” shtick—but also the idea that “meaning is use,” which opened up huge possibilities for me in poetry.

Still, for me poetry has to be about saying something and making it stick—that is, I want to move people in the old sense—and also, of course, I want to be moved myself. Expressiveness, beauty and contact with other human beings are what I value, and I’m willing to do that by any means necessary. These are old values to be sure, but by my lights I’ll take even old (dead) values in the face of no values any day. This is, I think, the Corso connection. For all his cantankerous, outsider ferocity, his work has heart, which is manifest by turns as a) an all too human on-the-go sloppiness, b) a willingness to believe in something (by any means necessary) in the face of believing that there’s nothing to believe in, and c) in a relentless (and hyper-romantic) pursuit of beauty in the face of no beauty, no value, no future. Bomb.

My experience in poetry thus far (that is, the poetry world—yikes!) is that my work is too talky and “weird” for the conventional academic poets and too boringly heartfelt for the post-avant hipsters—which is only to explain or account for where I’ve published my poems. The Ploughshares thing was a total fluke. Heather McHugh guest edited that issue, and she was one of my teachers. Otherwise, they wouldn’t give me the time of day. In general, it seems that the LUNGFULL!s and Pom2s (hell, even the Fences and Verses) of the world think my work is idiotic (plus none of their friends know me), and the Virginia Quarterlys, etc. think my work is really OUT THERE (plus their friends don’t like any of my former teachers). Anyway, I’m not particularly interested in being a member of any single camp. I believe that the things that connect us, even (esp.?) as poets, are both numerous and far more important than the things that divide us. Your post from today about community is just what all the doctors NEED. As for me, I’ll keep sending my work to everybody, and hopefully they’ll find something in it to like - as I find things to like in almost everybody else. High aims? You bet.

Again, I appreciated so much your blog comments. I thought the reading was fantastic, and it was a huge thrill to get to open for you and Anselm.. Perhaps we’ll meet again under less surprising circumstances. I certainly hope so.

Sincerely,

(the other) Matt Hart