William Matthews' "On a Diet"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2023

⏱️ 6 minutes

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Summary

William Procter Matthews III (November 11, 1942 – November 12, 1997) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He earned a BA from Yale and MFA from the University of North Carolina. The author of eleven books of poetry, Matthews earned a reputation as a master of well-turned phrases, wise sayings, and rich metaphors. Much of Matthews’s poetry explores the themes of life cycles, the passage of time, and the nature of human consciousness. His collection Time & Money (1996) won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Matthews’s other honors and awards included fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. He was awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize in 1997.

-bio via Poetry Foundation

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.0	I'm Sean Johnson and today is Friday, November 24th, 2003.
0:09.0	Today's poem is by William Matthews and for obvious reasons it's called On a Diet.
0:17.0	I'll read the poem once, offer a few comments, and then read it a second time.
0:21.6	Here's on a diet.
0:24.6	There's an epigraph that reads,
0:28.6	Eat All You Want, but Don't Swallow it, Archie Moore.
0:33.6	The Ruth of Soups and Palm of sauces I renounce equally.
0:40.7	What Rorschach saw in ink, I find in the buttery frizzle in the saute pan,
0:46.2	and I leave it behind, and the sweet peat smoke tang of bananas and cream and clots and chocolate,
0:53.4	I give away the satisfactions of food and take
0:56.6	desire for food.
0:58.0	I'll be traveling light to the heaven of revisions.
1:02.0	Why be at a pose, an expense, etc., in a waste, etc.
1:07.0	Something like the body of the poet's work, its pale shadows begins to pair and replace the poet's body.
1:16.7	And isn't it time?
1:33.3	This poem's theme seemed appropriate for the day after Thanksgiving. When some folks are out getting themselves trampled for discounted socks on Black Friday lines.
1:47.6	Others of us may already be eyeing our New Year's resolutions
1:51.0	as the bodily realities of the festal season begin to sink in and settle around the waistline.
2:07.0	And here in Matthew's poem, the literal swearing off of rich foods dances ambiguously and seamlessly into the metaphorical editing of one's own work as a kind of diet,
2:22.9	trimming and slimming down and toning up,
2:27.8	which is appropriate, perhaps, because the best diets are sometimes accompanied by a task that can hold one's attention
	...

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