Contemporary Ohio, New York, and Eastern Europe form the backdrop for the beauty and pathos unleashed in these poems. Using the vernacular of his Rust Belt heritage, Mathys builds upon memory and myth in a passionate exploration of culture, faith, sexuality, and artistic creation. Reaffirming poetry’s place in shaping the perceptions of our world, these tensile, incantatory poems find lyric grace in shaping a poetics amidst the fragmentation of society.

Originally from Wooster, Ohio, and a graduate of Carleton College in Minnesota, Ted Mathys has taught English in Hong Kong and worked for the US State Department in Berlin. A 2005 National Endowment for the Arts literary fellow, Mathys now lives and works in New York City.