Marty Matz was born in Brooklyn in the 1930’s, and from the picture painted in his posthumous collection of poems and reminiscences, In the Seasons of My Mind, his mother’s womb may have been the last place he spent more than a day at rest. Raised in Brooklyn and Omaha, Nebraska, Marty served in the Army in Colorado, then moved to San Francisco, where he hung out with some young bucks that eventually became the renowned core of Beat poetry. But instead of fame, Marty drifted south, to Mexico, where he spent fifteen years searching for a place that had yet to be infiltrated by Coca-Cola, Singer sewing machines, and pool tables. He failed, and so headed back north, and spent the remaining years of his life on a ragged journey to the center of his own spirit by way of frequent trips to Southeast Asia, returns to Mexico (including a stretch in prison), the writing of surreal poetry, and indulgence in countless derivatives of opium.

Now, with the publication of his collected works, we can all get a sample of his journey. His poems are bright and lively and over-indulgently surreal, attempting it seems to turn grammar into the tool that destroys itself and declare all logic useless against the assault of a mind freed from the constraints of sobriety. Witness this passage: IN WHAT TUBELESS INTERLUDE / DOES THE BRONZE BEAR CASE HIS WATCH / AND NAIL A TUNELESS PIANO TO THE STARS. What can be made of such a thing? Except that the writer both distrusts and loves language, that his mind makes connections no normal mind could make, that his fancy often turns to cosmic, and that he was completely, totally stoned?

By the time Marty died, in October of 2001, he’d lived the equivalent of that old aphorism, that you should arrive at the grave a beat-up wreck, on two wheels and a burnt-out engine, squealing to a stop to the thunderous applause of hundreds of your closest friends. There would be no good-looking corpse for Marty Matz, but there is In the Seasons of My Mind, a caring tribute to man with perhaps more ambition than talent, a man rich with friends and poor in self-preservation skills, a man whose myth only grows greater with each reminiscence and re-told story. It would be a kind world if we all shared that fate.

- Michael Ramberg