Miraculous Hours
NOMINATED FOR THE 2006 GERALD LAMPERT MEMORIAL AWARD
Matt Rader's debut collection is the fierce and tender retelling of our first "miraculous hours"--those early significant-and-strange interactions with the ones we love and the world we live in. From a world where wild dogs slide like ghosts into homes, water towers are "giant blue bullets unexploded in the earth" and walls are tortured to talk, Matt Rader forms a meticulously crafted reflection on how the events, experiences and environment of our early lives shape our sense of faith, our strongest convictions, and the map of the world we carry with us.
Released 2005
"Constructs a series of solid images and then takes them apart to see what makes them tick. It's hard to believe this is Rader's first book... The poet has the ability to see strange things, the quirky unseen details that might be difficult to mention... He documents that continuing sensual edge between the bright light and the burn."
–Jacqueline Turner, The Georgia Straight
"With Miraculous Hours, Matt Rader has hit the ground running. The poetic voice is confident and for the most part the poems are admirably sure-footed. A kind of calm self-possessedness was the right note to strike. The pieces in this collection are not exactly recollections in tranquility, their often dramatic subjects and content requiring a cool hand at the switch to avoid the slide into melodrama. Rader's control of the language and tone mean that this largely works... In Rader's work, the urban and domestic is as much a wilderness as wilderness is, charged with discovery and danger."
–Karen Solie, Event
"These poems are the work of an artist who sees things differently... [and] provide illuminating bursts of insights and recognition. This is brawny, challenging work."
–Statesman Journal, Salem, Oregon
"Very impressive... Rader has craft to burn and a compelling dark vision of life."
–Zachariah Wells, Quill & Quire