The Feel and Felt of Matt Mauch's Poetry Collection, Prayer Book

Matt Muach’s poetry collection, Prayer Book might threaten to cross the line of decency—even enter realms of blasphemy—if it weren’t for the poems’ sincerity. It is a book of tangents and fragments arranged into the form of prayers. The poems pray for hot peppers, black wool, lost underwear and anything else that might catch our attention with its gorgeous existence.

The book is divided into three sections, marked by quotes from Gary Snyder, Herman Melville, and Franz Kafka. These epigraphs launch each section of the book into a new inquiry of prayer; they explore the function, purpose, and source of prayers. The poems don’t question if prayer is a learned or spiritually gifted activity, as much as they highlight how human it is to hate what we love, love what we hate.

As a child, I was taught how to pray with the help of Sunday school pictographs. For this reason I’d like to present a sample of Matt Mauch’s beautiful collection in the form of felt creations.

When Gary Snyder say,

Thee is a body-mind dualism if I am sweeping the floor and thinking about Hegel. But if I am sweeping the floor and thinking about sweeping the floor, I am all one. Sweeping the floor becomes, then, the most important thing in the world. Which it is.



Prayer Book prays,

If one were lured by the peppers

growing like suns in pots

on the ledge, and if next one mistook,

in slanting sun, the open window and lack of glass

for perfectly clear glass, and

if furthermore one leaned in to flatten

a cheek or nose against the cool perfection,

one would fall to one’s death.

When Herman Melville says,

Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that e died embalmed.

Prayer Book prays,

blanket of wool cocooning

me as I croon: O

……………………there’s not enough praise for wool,

……………………black wool.

I can’t bring myself to scratch the itch.

……………………An enormous ebony spider

…………………...had spun and is spinning

……………………the universe.

When Franz Kafka says,

Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony.

Prayer Book prays,

The politics implied by the Levi’s

are not my mother’s. In the matter of underwear

mom counseled me to buy new yearly,

to throw out favorites if they’re ragged,

worn thin, said I wouldn’t want a rumor of shoddy briefs

to make it to the nurse’s station, to become

they are ill-mannered, know no better,

are probably poor.

My mother’s advice on underwear

as a correlative to reputation and namesake

is one example of a theme, a doctrine

from behind which a nation never emerges

in a cold war that lasts forever.

(Loving thanks to Sarahbell Foster for giving up her Sunday to help me make felt fish and authors. Gracious thanks to Matt Mauch for reminding us that everything is made of prayer.)