Reviewed by Ian Hamilton
As a public figure Matthew McConaughey will be known to many readers. In this anthology the reader is taken into his interior world, apparently a long way from his persona as film star.
The poems have a broad range of topic and structure, although several themes and modes recur.
One area of interior exploration that McConaughy chooses to share with his reader is a realm we might call “self-help”. A sample of his lines will suffice to demonstrate this point:
Regulations (Rhyme scheme aab aab aac)
Listen to yourself,
Hear yourself,
Learn yourself and mind.
Measure yourself,
Train yourself,
Referee yourself in kind.
………
Own yourself,
Exchange yourself,
Pay yourself back. (p86).
Additionally, he ponders his commitment to family, to forgiveness and to prayer/faith.
From Daughter’s Bed (Rhyme scheme aabb)
Take care of the kids, love on their mother,
look in the mirror, sometimes see another.
To see women as sisters and men as my brothers,
hopin’ to pull it off here under these covers. (p121)
Untitled: (Free verse/ prose poetry)
God, give me another sip of forgiveness
before I am drunk with resentment.
The sip allows salvation, but the drink is going to kill me. (p164)
From Sometimes (Rhyme scheme abcb)
Sometimes I pray for guidance
sometimes I bow in confession
sometimes I ask for courage
or to remember a lesson.
Sometimes I pray to unload
some bullshit that’s weighing me down
sometimes I pray for forgiveness
to find grace behind my frown. (p145)
Most of the poems are confessional in tone. In addition to the themes noted above he reveals his frailties (drug taking, for instance) and thinks about time and the lost opportunities of his life.
If we take Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s advice that poetry is “the best words in the best order” then we have a criterion against which to judge a poet’s output (however subjectively). While McConaughey deals with ideas which have resonance for many people, and therefore the poetry passes the test of relevance, it may be a more contested idea that the poems offer vivid and lasting insights. He appears to have uncomplicated concepts of God and prayer, which may be a flaw in his work, given that God is, arguably, one of the most polyvalent words in our language.
Technically his work is straightforward but he does achieve an identifiable voice. His cadences are familiar and he employs a variety of rhyme schemes (as noted above). His least successful, in terms of a poetic sophistication, are rhyming couplets (aabb). Otherwise, he seems reluctant to use imagery (figurative language created by metaphor or simile); although he does refer to life as a race several times and uses financial terminology. He rarely employs techniques such as juxtaposition, alliteration and assonance.
His poetry has an earnestness and a “home-spun” quality which clearly has appeal, as both Greenlights, and this anthology, have been commercial successes.
Poems & Prayers
[2025]
by Matthew McConaughey
Headline
ISBN: 978 103540 554 1
$36.99; 203pp