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:
“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”
—Bible: New Testament Jesus, in Matthew, 6:9-13.
the Lord’s Prayer. In Luke 11:4, the words are “forgive us our sins; for we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us.” The Book of Common Prayer gives the most common usage, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.”
“The existence of good bad literature—the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one’s intellect simply refuses to take seriously—is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“That matches are made in heaven, may be, but my wife would have been just the wife for Peter the Great, or Peter Piper. How would she have set in order that huge littered empire of the one, and with indefatigable painstaking picked the peck of pickled peppers for the other.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)