Late Spring Catalog

"Matthew Dickman's signature lyricism electrifies."—Patricia Smith, author of The Intentions of Thunder, winner of the National Book Award

In Matthew Dickman's fifth collection, the dead are still very much alive, and love is celebrated in all its varied expressions. Late Spring Catalog follows the author's mother through the ICU and hospice, as Dickman bears witness to their relationship. Interspersed throughout are love poems that explore both erotic and platonic love, and a series of elegies celebrating those the author has lost. In these accessible and direct poems, grief and love are bedfellows of the human condition; Dickman pieces together the blown-apart world created by both love and loss, of being human, of illness, sex, death, and what comes after. Though deeply personal, this book is universal in its concerns; it's for anyone who has ever fallen in love, lost a beloved, or simply found themselves "as they say, in the throes of life."