John Matthias has been publishing poetry, criticism, memoirs, plays, and translations since the appearance of his first book in 1970. He taught Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Notre Dame for nearly fifty years and has been Visiting Fellow in Poetry at Clare Hall, Cambridge. Among his recent books, Living with a Visionary (Dos Madres Press, 2021) takes its title from his New Yorker memoir about his wife Diana's struggle with Parkinson's disease that was widely read in 2021, while Some Words on Those Wars (Dos Madres Press, 2021) provides the social, military, and political context for "Kedging," a long poem about her distinguished British family. That poem, in turn, leads directly to "The Scent of Smoke," the first selection in the present book.
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