Every Possible Blue by Matthew Thorburn
Every Possible Blue by Matthew Thorburn, graduate, the MFA in Creative Writing at The New School.
WordTech Communications, 2012
Saturated with color and light, Thorburn’s second collection celebrates New York with deft, vivacious strokes. Similar to the way a city is always rebuilt, or a painter reworks a canvas, Thorburn’s poems pay special attention to the clothing and adornments that change to fit life’s varied occasions. “Oh to be crisply cuffed,/ something in fall flannel to flatter/ this flaneur,” he writes in “Men Swear.” An airy poem describing a white blouse—“like a sail” with “two buttons un/done/ a peek of pale breast/ bone”—becomes a tender observation not of the clothing but of the wearer. But “inky/ silks, slinky satins” don’t fool Thorburn. No matter what people wear, whether it is a second-hand tuxedo or a “mint green” sari, he reminds himself, “you’re human,/ you’re human.” Thorburn moves beyond Astoria. “The Red Studio” is written from the perspective of Henri Matisse; in another poem, Thorburn finds himself inside an Edouard Manet painting face to face with a staring nude: “I blink. I blush,” Thorburn confesses. “Horse Poetica” transplants us to a place where “we hang/ a left at the one-armed cactus. There’s another life/ after this one, but it’s just as dusty.”