Matthew Thorburn
continued
But the architecture of the poems in Subject to Change is simply the space that encloses a writer completely engaged with some old romantic notions. Even though he knows a lot and can fill his poems with witty allusions to art and music and literature, what motivates this enormously talented young poet is a sense of the beautiful and a belief in its efficacy. It is fascinating to see someone who has obviously moved through many of the intellectual and creative trends of the new millennium arrive back at a place that seems almost nineteenth century.
In "Coda: Where the River Runs," the poem that ends this collection, Thorburn lists things that seize and grip his heart — "the light in light-brown eyes," "the cello's wavery rubato," "the lovers falling / into one another." And he keeps his list running almost to the end:
| Where the river runs, over the rocks. Where the black tern hovers over the inland marshes the light grinds down to a dusky glow — quiet, quiet, even if my heart wallops in my chest like a fish in a bucket, and there's nothing I can say to make it stop. |
It is to relearn the importance of those moments that a teacher comes back to sit at the student's feet.
