Blues for Bill: A Tribute to William Matthews

Published by University of Akron Press, 2005

 Featured Poem: “Blues, For Bill”

 About the anthology:
“Blues for Bill celebrates the life and work of the poet William Matthews through his own language, that of poetry. While poems of William Matthews are well know and remembered, this collection of poems ensures that the world will remember Bill himself: his graciousness, intelligence, knowledge, style, good humor, capacity for friendship, immense talent, and wit. The poems included were written by people who knew Bill in a variety of ways, under myriad circumstances; as friend, both old and new; as mentor and teacher; as colleague; as father. The poems are remarkable, true testaments to Bill and his art.” —The Editors (Kurt Brown, Meg Kearney, Donna Reis and Estha Weiner)

“In this volume of poems and remembrances, [Bill] is best remembered as a teacher and friend. He had a gift for both, and he trained, developed, and disciplined those gifts as if they were his precious children whose talents he could not bear to see wasted. He made friendship and teaching seem easy, as if he’d given them no more thought than he had to quitting smoking. But Bill worked hard at them. Making difficult tasks appear to have been done brilliantly almost by accident was not a point of vanity for him, but a moral principle. Making painful things seem painless, turning evident loss into apparent gain, and converting loneliness into solitude were for Bill ethically necessary.” —Russell Banks, Foreword

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