Kindle Edition Amazon Official Website Category:  Poetry Publisher: Burning Flower Press ISBN-10:  0578508125 Type: Fiction Pages: 136 Copyright:  July 1, 2019 ISBN-13: 9780578508122 Price: $2.99 (eBook) "Feast of Sapphires," is a compendium of a wide variety of poems, covering topics both timely and universal. From comedic monologues to existential reflections, from angry rants to countercultural analysis, from wily narratives to verbal pyrotechnics, this is a book that strives, in new ways, to be illuminating. The follow up to "Butterflies Lost Within The Crooked Moonlight," which Kirkus Review deemed "powerful verse from a writer of real talent," "Feast of Sapphires," has already been called "poetry of the highest quality" by Matt McAvoy. Jim Bennett, meanwhile, insists it is "highly recommended" and granted it four stars. One poem from the manuscript, "If We Are Doomed," won the 2018 Spirit First Poetry Contest Editor's Choice Award, out of thousands of submissions, and will be anthologized in a new book titled "Spirit First: 10 Years of Meditation and Mindfulness Poems." Thirteen other poems were previously published in such journals as Oxford Magazine, The Wire's Dream, and New Plains Review. "Feast of Sapphires," is a compendium of a wide variety of poems, covering topics both timely and universal. There are poems of psychic revolution (for those ready to put down the Kool-Aid), poems about pretense and gun control, poems about MRI's, gambling, and mystical storms of all varieties; then, too, on a deeper level, more than a few of these poems are about the desire to surmount the collective facade in search of a kind of truth that cannot be hyperlinked. Located from Costa Rica to the LIRR, this metaphysical cartography of anticipation and despair is perfect for those seeking answers in the bottom of the tea, in the resonance of a thunder storm, or, even, in the ethereal high of a linguistic flight of fancy. From comedic monologues to existential reflections, from angry rants to countercultural analysis, from wily narratives to verbal pyrotechnics, this is a book that strives, in new ways, to be illuminating.       Excerpt To The Donut Shop I go to the donut shop like a soldier at a peace rally like hipsters playing bingo like roses in vinegar like degenerates in the soup like Martians sucking down keg stands like fire become a glacier. I go to the donut shop like a monk on dialysis like a sad clown praying like the Simpsons made real like a leper who abandons all cures. I go and I go and I go.

"FEAST OF SAPPHIRES" BY MATT NAGIN
A prolific collection of poetry by a hugely creative author. These poems, although short, are very bittersweet, and they yell “quality”, from beginning to end. I do enjoy reviewing poetry from time to time, and it is fair to say that this collection is of my favourites to date – I liked it a lot.

There is an underlying theme – not in terms of the subject matter, but in general overall mood and context: there is anger, cynicism and despair in this work. Be prepared, the writing is moody and dark – to be read at night by candlelight. Often with poetry, you feel it is an experiment, or a little bit of fun for the author, but not in this case - Nagin feels his work, writing it with gritted teeth, through a pen as sharp as a razor, and his cynicism is smart and infectious. Covering a diversity of observations, such as love, suicide, injustice, genocide, pop culture, traitorous religion, the environment… all different in tone, some laugh-out-loud funny, every one seems like a self-contained cry out for “sense” from the world, which wouldn’t appear out of place in the Tate Modern (contemporary art museum in London). Matt seems to have been in a dark place for much of this book’s creation, and there is an underlying sense of doom, which seems to grow in intensity as the book goes on, whether from personal or global destruction. You share his desperation, and pity it (as a fellow writer, it is difficult not to share the feeling of injustice at the “Poet Laureate” – the completely plausible message being: Matt cares, she doesn’t).

As well as meaning every word, this author is clearly a very talented wordsmith; these are not just verse - they are stories, questions, lessons and vitriol, loaded with enigmatic metaphors which are still easy to get. Almost every poem in this collection ends on a sublime punchline, which makes you nod knowingly, with a wink and a smile; even the tiniest – “L.S.D.” at just 15 words, brings a playful grin to the reader’s face. There are some real gems here (hence the title, I guess).

Poetry of the highest quality, written by a very good author, and I certainly hope to read more from Matt.

A poetic feast as surprising as it is satisfying.
A collection offers diverse poems packed with dramatic imagery.

Nagin (Butterflies Lost Within the Crooked Moonlight, 2017) is a man of many talents. He has directed films and worked the stand-up comedy circuit. Perhaps it is this variety of life experiences that allows the promising poet to write ably in so many different registers in his latest collection of verse. Nagin’s previous book is a thrilling rush; it is indulgent, elaborate, and euphoric. His new volume shows him working in a more restrained mode. But this is no critique: If his poetry here is less effusive, it is also more compressed. Like the gem in the collection’s title, these poems are smaller, brighter, and sharper than those he’s written before. Take as just one example the striking piece “It’s Hard To Write Poetry in a Storm.” The poem opens: “It’s hard to write poetry / when the knife jams in / cowards sing / and you are left awash / like a piece of driftwood.” This brief stanza is a carefully crafted machine wound tight; so much drama bursts forth in the words. All of which isn’t to say that the poet can’t still let loose. He does so in the arresting “Hit By A Car”: “You can see into your arm; strange innards blossoming like a sunflower; / you’re a trillion miles away looking down at yourself before the visage / of identity returns; the pain hot, a strange death in your throat.” In this and similar passages elsewhere, the author’s writing—like the poem’s sunflower—blossoms, flaring out in stunning bursts of detail and emotion. Nagin is drawn to violent imagery, from jamming knives to broken limbs. Yet these details feel less prurient than real and raw. They give readers the sense that something truly valuable is at stake.

A poetic feast as surprising as it is satisfying.

Feast Of Sapphires (Poetry Review)
The first thing you notice about Matt Nagin's poetry is how it jumps off the page with rhythm and purpose, and all with a razor wit and extensive palette. From citing current events that affect everyone in the macroscopic universe, such as gun control in the poem - Vegas Massacre, to a more personal take on things closer to home. Feast of Sapphires is the product of a mind heavily tuned into the subconscious mind, yet with the ultra-realized presence of the conscious and present one.


'I go out

and collect

the light

like a tiger

on the precipice.'


The opening line to the collection is a perfect opening, hinting at the brevity, precision and evocative nature of things to come. As we progress through the collection, things open up. The poems are often confrontational, edgy and intellectually stimulating, so much so that one can feel pleasantly dazed and spun by the prose. The title, Feast of Sapphires, said by the author to be something beautiful and valuable that is painful when consumed, is a perfect analogy for many of the works. To stir, and to make people see the truth, one has to show the beauty in form, yet talk without filters.


'children wrapped in

a vituperative fist;

a cry of bombs dropped

so calamitous they have

no beginning,'


Then there are moments of great invention and imagination. One of my favourites has to be - 'When An Angel Falls,' because of the way it injects cynicism into something as unearthly and unreal as an angel's wings, yet still evokes the reader with a sense of distaste.


'the halo I pawn

for hard cash,

wings I pedal

dirt cheap on eBay,'


But the poet also seeks to understand the very artform in which he writes in poems such as - The Poem Meets Me, and, It's Hard To Write Poetry In A Storm, from which he writes, 'Joker dancing before an angry judge. The storm is here. You ready?' Stating perhaps that, yes it's hard, but one must write anyway.


In his poems, one feels that Nagin is scratching away at the scabs of unhealed wounds and asking his reader to do likewise. Things itch and have to be scratched. Sometimes healing can only come from making fresh wounds.


'I woke up

like a new man,

a soul reborn

with intensity;

birds singing

in my chest,

squirrels

searching

for sky.


There are so many varied forms present, and so many imaginatively skewed ways of seeing things anew. The invention in a poem called, Metaphors, is breathtaking and exceptional. The tenacity and intensity of poems like, 'The End Of Anticipation, Beggars, and, Snowed-In Snow, to name but a few, is remarkable. The stark willingness to speak of a Poet Laureate, as unworthy, the ability to turn tech-terms into literary wit in, Photos On The Rocks, is just sublime.


The collection is full of riches, from talking about death, life, the future, and the inevitability of self-destruction. The subject matters are diverse, yet they all spring from the same existential core. With his poetry, Nagin seeks to inform, infiltrate and discover the mind, and does so with a very human and caring heart. I thoroughly recommend this collection of poetry and consider it to be one of the best I've read in a while. I shall leave you with the beautifully stark line from his poem, 'Night'


'the symphony we hear right before our dreams get lost

and we convince ourselves we shall dance no more.'