Book Of Matches is a poetry book written by Simon Armitage, first published in 1993 by Faber and Faber. Several poems featured in the book are studied as part of the GCSE English Literature examination in the UK.
The book is written in three sections, the first (Book of Matches) containing 30 short sonnets. Each is meant to be read within 20 seconds, the amount of time it would take for a match to be lit and burn out. The second, Becoming of Age, contains 14 titled poems, with the third, Reading the Banns, containing a collection of untitled poems based upon a wedding theme.
Critical reception for Book of Matches was mostly positive, Ronald Carter calling it Armitage's "most distinctive volume". The Independent stated that it was a "fine collection" and noted that Armitage's persona had changed in the collection's tone.
Famous quotes containing the words book of, book and/or matches:
“There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge.
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters,
In a way to make people of common sense damn metres,
Who has written some things quite the best of their kind,
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which you have found it impossible to read at home, but for which you still have a lingering regard, is the best to carry with you on a journey.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No phallic hero, no matter what he does to himself or to another to prove his courage, ever matches the solitary, existential courage of the woman who gives birth.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)