Book Description

Praise for The Sportsman's Guide to Field Dressing Man: Matthew is only 5 foot 7 inches. His poetry makes him seem at least 5 foot 7 1/2 inches. That's a big deal. —Buddy Wakefield, author of Gentleman Practice When I hear Matthew's words or read them, I say to myself: how does his brain work? His mind must be like a house of many interesting rooms—each arranged to hang us, dress us, and rock us in the most arresting, comical, and tragic way. —Jan Grimm, author of My Beautiful Leukemia Warning: the belches and screams churned up on these pages from Matthew Jackson's viscera will awaken the post-apocalyptic hipster-redneck inside you. —Andrew Schep, pastor extraordinaire Matthew D. Jackson knows all too well that lightning is pretty when a gray sky smiles. He's trying to show you singed trees and quivering creatures. He's desperate to put the human back in humanity. This unapologetic bouquet of words hopes to attract the bravest eyes; readers that are willing to smack the beehive and watch, hear the angry buzz, and feel the stings. —John Survivor Blake, poet, lecturer, writer, & youth advocate Dressing in the fields is tough work. You must address it before everything goes bad. Matthew deftly field dresses with a blade of words. —Dan Smith, Listener Whenever Matthew Jackson lets me crawl around in his head through his poetry it is like any trip into an unknown place: a little scary and sometimes confusing with flashes of familiarity and moments of discovery, but most of all never ever boring. —Terry Whittaker, Viewpoint Books Matthew Jackson writes poems that are personal and universal; comforting and shocking; hard as bricks and soft as feathers. In these poems, Jackson explores the harsh realities of the world, while exposing the hard-earned truths in the exposed cracks of our lives. He's speaking for all of us. Stop, listen and learn. —Joseph Kerschbaum, author of Your Casual Survival, & Reservoir Dogwood member See the beauty parlors, Dollar Stores, closed churches, inking of all those bodies, and a young hood-rat mother as she wrestles a cigarette and wrangles her baby boy. Matthew Jackson captures the brutal, broken, going-broke heart of America in Indiana as no other contemporary poet. He stays close to home and close to the bone. Forget Midwestern sentimentality and academic distance—get real and get wicked with The Sportsman’s Guide to Field Dressing Man . —Katerina Tsiopos, Ph.D, author of And Know this Place, & Our Slow Migration North Matthew outdoes himself and undoes the rest of us in this elegant and caustic amalgamation. Some might call The Sportsman’s Guide to Field Dressing Man a well-flipped bird. —Amy E. C. Linnemann, midwife to this collection of poetry Matthew Jackson is one of those rare plain speakers who paints colorful pictures with well chosen words. His powers of observation are keen, and the human stories he tells are both quirky and compelling. This writer and spoken word artist is one of a kind! —Susan Sandberg, President, Bloomington City Council Well-dressed minds everywhere agree—Matthew Jackson's Man is on its way to becoming a global fashion icon. —Judy Spector, Ph.D., author of The Fairy Godmentor's Advice for Women Like Us: Life Lessons from Educated Women The Sportsman Guide to Field Dressing Man is an instant remedy for your jocular itch. —Brandon Andress, general polymath & author of Unearthed Matthew Jackson is the Keith Richards of poetry (just without the drug induced haze that produced The Harlem Shuffle). His words are well worth the read. He takes you on a twisted ride through middle aged Central and Southern Indiana roots. But don't let his passive Buddhist exterior fool you. He will slap you silly with his metaphors and imagery (see the biker poem collected herein). His name and his poetry are destined to be mentioned in the same breaths that reference James Whitcomb Riley, Buddy Wakefield, Allen Ginsburg, Rod McKuen, Charles Bukowski and dare I say it, Jewel. You will enjoy this collection (especially his poem, Flutter). Insert Happy Face Emoticon here!!! —Jason L. Ammerman, poet, & Reservoir Dogwood member