"Matthea Harvey's vision of America is spooky, apocalyptic, and beautiful: proof that there is wonder in even a dark time like ours."—George Saunders
Modern Life
Poems
- Winner of the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award
A National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
From the author of Sad Little Breathing Machine, Matthea Harvey's Modern Life introduces a more serious voice, one troubled by fear and love and what is to come. In the central sequences, "The Future of Terror" and "The Terror of the Future," Harvey imagines a political and global conflict that seems frighteningly familiar. Another sequence describes the life and times of Robo-Boy, who comes to adolescence and struggles with his dual personality—part boy, part machine. Throughout is Harvey's signature wit and concision, in lyrics and prose poems about the double-natured side of objects and humanity, of what we see and what we know.
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Praise
- Named by the New York Times as a "Notable Book" and by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as a "Best Book of 2007"
- “A pleasure. . . this collection should make us optimistic about the future of American poetry.”—The New York Times Book Review
- “Nothing short of blazingly original.”—Time Out New York
- “Harvey continues to match her unique sensibility with subjects that matter; her poems are both empathic and delightful.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review