All the Ghosts in My Hometown

'All the ghosts in my hometown, the latest collection by the prolific Matt Borczon is surely aptly titled. To call it a love letter to the poet’s hometown or a nostalgic ode to adolescence would adequate only in the most basic of interpretations. Indeed, the collection provides nuanced, multi-faceted analyses of what it means to have lived the life that Borczon has. While for sure there are brief glimpses of sweet reminiscence, the poet drills down and expresses the ambiguous nature of our collective existence. There’s something beautifully universal without losing the razor-edged specificity that Borczon is known for. When reaching the final poem of the collection, the reader feels as though they have shared all of these experiences, lived a parallel life with the poet, and that is precisely what makes All the ghosts in my hometown so successful, and so deeply moving. Matt Borczon has long-established himself as one of the most engaging poets writing today, but with All the ghosts in my hometown, he has once again raised the bar for writers and readers alike.'-James Benger, author of One Week'In his latest collection, All the Ghosts in My Hometown, Matt Borczon maps the lives of the tender, lost misfits and dreamers he knew growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania. Borczon’s Erie is not the Erie of posh lakeside yacht clubs and wind-sails and boat drinks. The human landscape of Borczon’s world is often box-cutter and bullet violent, a place where a sad girl cuts herself and saves her blood in old soda bottles; a place where a sweet stripper believes numerology can help anyone pick their perfect pet and the moon is sinking into the earth so fast she can feel it; a place where a coal miner’s memory of light amounts to stars piercing the sky like pinholes on the lid of a coffin. Borczon’s people are rendered with a complexity and tenderness that can come only from a writer who’s been there, in both that darkness and light, himself. In one poem, the speaker imagines gathering again with his childhood bandmates, and how, after years of loss and experience, 'we can/ all plug in/ and play/ Knocking on /Heaven’s Door /and mean it / like we never could /at nineteen.' This is a beautiful, longing, heart-rich book about growing up and growing old, and the empathy, understanding, and wisdom only age can bring.'  -Lori Jakiela, author of All Skate:  True Tales from Middle Life'While the rest of use are still fumbling with words, Matt Borczon has been writing his poems with flamethrowers, showing what war does to soldiers when they come home. In All the ghosts in my hometown, he turns his vision to the things closet to us all, our neighborhoods, and he shows us how those things haunt our days. Here are the guys working factory jobs as they close, and here they are trying to drive a train into the closing factory. These poems are beautiful and terrifying. The daughters of union organizers are here, and they’re afraid to get shot because they know the bullet holes and remember their fathers. Coal miners speak like poets. Strippers struggle with stripping. Harry Houdini’s escapes are an inspiration. So many of these poems have names as titles. Seth. Becky. Stanley. Jenny. Alice. Stanley, Jr. If you’ve never looked at yourself and wondered what was wrong, read this book. If you’ve never looked at your neighbors and wondered what was wrong, read this book. Matt will show you what’s wrong with all of us-our insecurities, our violence, our desire for love and our desire to run from love-then remind you that we’re together in in this burning ball of water and dirt and that we need to do better, and how dong better is so hard or almost impossible.'  -Dave Newman, Better Than the Best American Poetry