In Memory of William H. Matchett, March 5, 1923-June 21, 2021
William Matchett taught English at the University of Washington from 1954 until he retired in 1982, but he continued teaching and writing since leaving the university. His latest book, Airplants: Selected Poems, was published in 2013, and joins his two previous books of poetry, The Water Ouzel and Fireweed . He is also the author of Shakespeare and Forgiveness and co-authored, with his colleague Jerome Beaty, Poetry: from Statement to Meaning. He also has written stories, articles and other criticism, and his work has appeared in dozens of magazines, including The New Yorker, Saturday Review of Literature, Harper’s and The New Republic.
Matchett was born into a Quaker family and he is active with Seattle’s University Meeting and had years of involvement with various projects of the American Friends Serviced Committee. He served on the University Hospital Board for ten years after its inception in 1978, on the Kitsap County Planning Commission from 1990 to 2003, and as President of the Hood Canal Environmental Council from 1992 to 2012. Since retirement, he has made his home on Hood Canal, where he and his wife had already been spending summers and where they have been much involved in environmental politics.
It took Matchett eight years to get through Swarthmore College, being interrupted by WWII, during which he was assigned as a conscientious objector, first to a Civilian Public Service camp in New Hampshire and then as a guinea pig to the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory in Cambridge, MA. After graduation from Swarthmore in 1949, he married and returned to Cambridge to pursue a Ph.D. at Harvard. While there, he had a teaching assistantship working with students in Archibald MacLeish’s immensely popular poetry course, and was one of the founders of the Poets’ Theatre, active with it until his departure in 1954. In addition to Matchett’s teaching at the UW, he spent nineteen years as editor of the Modern Language Quarterly, a period of association with Carolyn Kizer in editing the first year of Poetry Northwest, and a term as Chairman of the UW faculty Senate.
(from Airplants: Selected Poems)
Swamp Robin
Approaching the center of the island,
leaving at last the constant sound of the sea,
you climb an overgrown trail through a barren highland
past a dying tree
that is covered with scaling lichens and drying gums,
when, flowing suddenly into the virginal hush
and mounting phrase by phrase to enchant you, comes
the liquid silver of song of the Olive-backed Thrush.
Wait. Hold your breath.
The spell will be lost if the singer senses you near;
the song will cease which, hearing, you fear would be death
not to hear.
—William Matchett
Safe in the Alley, for William Matchett
—Paul Hunter
In Bill's childhood his grandfather's safe was stolen somehow in the night out of the office of his furniture business. It was found next morning face-down in the alley. It had apparently fallen off a truck and couldn't be budged in a moment of panic, that could hardly be imagined in the clear light of day. There it lay in the alley in Chicago, inert and heavy and real. His grandfather had to pay someone to move it back indoors, probably his employees, but someone who knew how to do that. It was a project, a serious chore. Of such invisible turning points are a life made, though you might never know what's inside its hard black exterior, though it might stand open wide in the corner of the office every business day. The thieves were stealing it to take it where they had the tools and privacy to open it later. But when it fell off the truck near the loading dock its full weight was on the combination dial and handle. There weren't enough thieves there to pick it up. Where it lay in the night it was a blunder, incriminating and useless. The thieves were never caught, and the safe was back in use for as long as the old man and his son owned the store.
Why did Bill tell me that story? Why did we revisit it maybe four more times over our fifty-five years? I asked him to tell it to me again several times because I thought the first time he told me, there was a message in the safe, that he was trying to figure out. It was a puzzle, like the puzzles his grandfather used to make of wood, so carefully fitted, requiring such patience to work the first time, and no fair breaking open. As a boy he saw that safe lying face-down in that alley. The boy watched the men puzzle over it, the police who were called and took notes. Then he watched them move it back inside.
Bill was a good, generous, brilliant man. This was something he carried lifelong, that he could not figure out. Such riddles may be what friends and loved ones are for. I told him it might have been the moment something in him first knew he would not follow in his father's and grandfather's footsteps. It was the moment their world in the furniture business had come to a dead-end, a secret shut face-down, with for the moment no way out or in.
The Good Man
The good man never wears a hat
till one day he's never without it
the good man takes a private stand
the same as his public stand
on the library steps in silence from
noon to one with a criminal war on
later when he has dinner
he might have a bite of dessert but
doesn't drink or smoke never argues
late into the night never lets anger
get the better of him never shouts
in despair never shakes a fist
his words are measured and quiet
he believes speech after long silence
can ring like the voice of God
for those still lost in the wilderness
forty years worshipping idols
obeying shattered stone tablets
eating only manna that came
as the morning dew or first frost
Does he suffer guilt and confusion?
The good man is often in doubt
but patient to think his way to
a moment of rest or conclusion
What is it about a calm generous man
teaching kids to ask and answer
questions they have to own? What is it
about a long life by the end held together
the old way with string and brown paper
and stamps worth as little forever
that he has to lick and stick on
to send far away from himself
so that his life will live on?
—Paul Hunter