Matthew Freeman Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, March 28

Matthew Freeman will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, March 28.

Also featured will be Catherine Rankovic and Tony Renner.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is free.

Matthew Freeman woke up and found he was falling when as a teenager his football coach got him into Dylan Thomas and a dear girl friend introduced him to the romantics. So began a wild journey which would leave him expelled from school and committed to an asylum, and diagnosed with schizophrenia. After bouncing in and out of hospitals and drunk tanks he finally began his recovery. He has had four books published and has graduated from Saint Louis University, where he was awarded the Montesi prize, and is now an MFA student at the University of Missouri St. Louis, where he was awarded the Graduate Prize in poetry.

Critics have high praise for Freeman’s poetry:

“Gritty and real, full of personality (and personalities), urban St. Louis scenery and experience.” —- J. Gordon, Nightimes.com

“Simultaneously hip, funny, and sad.” -— Dorothea Grossman, Poet

“A microscope into the world of an extraordinarily talented schizophrenic.” —- Suzanne Shenkman.

Lake Woeishere

When I hear Garrison Keilor talk about Lutherans
in that light comedic kitsch
on pusillanimous public radio
amid the seemingly knowing chuckles
of fat farts in the audience—
oh my lord can you imagine someone
taking a date there?—I myself
don’t laugh but get very angry
because this guy doesn’t know anything at all
about Martin Luther or Lutherans.

You’re not a real Lutheran until
you’ve walked on your knees up the stairs of a monastery
flagellating yourself with a bitter whip
on each step ten times
over guilt at having glimpsed
the subtle bare momentary wrist
of a heavily-clothed maiden
in a congregation of stone Catholics.

-- Matthew Freeman