Fifth season Book

Poetry. A simply and beautifully produced book from Provincetown Arts Press. Frank Bidart lauds the fact that Matias' "struggles to survive and the search to find manifestation on the page here are one: new, tender, quick." "Fifth Season" chronicles a literal struggle to survive, the struggle of a poet living with AIDS to keep life meaningful. Sunsets, gay bars, Myambutal, histories both personal and communal, sex and last wills and testaments coexist in poems that refuse to look away from the beautiful, even while the painful insists on being seen as well. "Matias' poems have been anthologized in Things Shaped In Passing: More "poets For Life" Writing From The Aids Pandemic, and he was the recipient of a poetry fellowship at the Free Arts Work Center in Provincetown in 1994-95. "In his short time, David measured up to his promise remarkably; this is a rich, deeply intelligent book, a triumph of art and feeling" (Robert Pinsky). David Matias died in 1996.