Some poets get noticed …

because they sound like no one else; others become representative voices, symbols or symptoms of their group or generation. William Matthews, who died at 55 in 1997, belongs to the latter category. Matthews’s three decades of wry, conversational verse display the attractions and faults of a period style; his son’s memoir finds in the poet’s life the tastes, habits and privileges that made the poems what they were. / NYT 18.1.04

SEARCH PARTY
Collected Poems of William Matthews.
Edited by Sebastian Matthews and Stanley Plumly.
314 pp. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. $26.

IN MY FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS
A Memoir.
By Sebastian Matthews.
278 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. $24.95