On Ted Mathys

When I first read the announcement for the Ploughshares Emerging Writers Issue I immediately thought of Ted Mathys, a poet whose talent reminds one of Hart Crane, and not just because Ted is also from Ohio and now lives in New York, but because of the preternatural facility for language they share as well as the stunning vision of this world that most of us would not perceive without their poetry. From the first poems he sent me blind as a portfolio for admission into a poetry workshop at Carleton College in Minnesota, I have been impressed by his voice that so marks this time while resonating past and future. Since his graduation two years ago, we have worked more closely than ever, even while he was writing in Hong Kong, and in this time his work has hit warp-speed, completing two excellent, cohesive full-length collections and a chapbook.

—Greg Hewett, author of two volumes of poetry: Red Suburb and To Collect the Flesh. He is Professor of English at Carleton College.