Return to Book Page Living Things By Matt Rader AVAILABLE 0-88971-223-9 Nightwood Editions 5.25 x 7.5 · 88 pages Paperback · $16.95 March 2008 "Living Things thrives." -George Elliott Clarke, Halifax ChronicleHerald Matt Rader’s Living Things features poems that are essentially catalogues of experience. There’s a Witmanesque interest in singing of everyday things, but within the constraints of form, including rhyme that’s almost invisible ... Rader loves the sound of words and the shapes of poems ... simply lovely imagery ... Living Things thrives. -George Elliott Clarke, Halifax ChronicleHerald "A poet who can do woodstoves and chain saws, Matt Rader, who grew up in Comox and now lives in Oregon, is not a nature faddist. Living Things is a slim volume that shows a highly familiar knowledge of trees, plants and birds which did not get picked up by browsing a field guide... Sit with one of Rader’s tree poems, close the book, close your eyes, and there is his exact tree." -Hannah Main-van der Kamp, BC BookWorld "The world must usually be a beautiful place in Matt Rader’s world. His latest book of poems, Living Things, is a gentle but passionate tribute to nature. This is particularly true for a series of poems from "The Lives of North American Trees." In poetic form, Rader explores the Western hemlock, Garry oak and the arbutus, perfectly describing their outer shell without doing so directly. But the tree’s personalities come through as well. However, more importantly, the image of the trees immediately comes to mind...." -GotPoetry.com "There’s movement and passion in these precisely built poems. Rader throws off sparks from first to last here... Rader is a Wordsworthian, contemplative, lofty-voiced poet by nature. But at some key points in Living Things he ceases to muse, gets wild, and starts driving big poetic ideas home with sonic collision, and big emotions. Great phrases leap from nearly every piece ... Living Things is crammed with slant-rhymed thirteen-line sonnets, wonky near-ghazals and suchlike conventional subversions—Rader is becoming a useful Canadian poet because he can declaim in pretty plain language. ... Matt Rader always had style, dudes. He’s added some juice and jump now, and bowls strike after heavy strike in this terrific volume.” -Lyle Neff, sub-Terrain "Bringing a certain gentle kindness to a hostile world, the lyrical verse of Living Things is entertaining all the way through. Highly recommended for community library poetry collections and poetry lovers in general." -Small Press Bookwatch, Wisconsin