This is a millennial voice bravely cast across the diminishments and inhuman economic displacements of our time. Matt Stefon’s crisp, spare, poems present a sensibility acutely aware of “killing time” caught between “dissipation” and “transition”. Everywhere, the emblems of loss—a bobber, dumped shiners, voided trees—unflinchingly presented with a blinding lyrical purity. Beautiful, honest, and powerful, these poems give voice to the distress of his generation. The narrator of these poems who tells himself to “fold your rationalizations into yourself” nevertheless finds redemption where he can—in the New England landscape, the brick factory building that survives, re-purposed, coffee and mornings, and, as always, love. I can’t wait to see what Matt Stefon writes next.
–David Chin, poet and a professor of English at Penn State Wilkes-Barre