Black Calculus

Falling, shifting, carrying,” are just some of the themes you should expect from Norm Mattox’s collection Algo Rhythms: Mathmattox Love Poems. Here the poet expresses all the ways we use the word love by pulling it through the ringer of constructs we have created around it. If you are in need of a wakeup call, this collection is for you.
–Thomas Fucaloro, author of “The Only gardening I Do is When I Give Up“

Norman Mattox’s poems are full of empathy, synergy, ebullience, accrual, hopefulness, longing, deep feeling, and sonic invention. Like the wonderful poem by Pablo Neruda “The Chair,” Mattox’s poems resonate with history, the oft-felt but seldom voiced, the love-filled and the ineluctable. When I read his work, I want to play the saxophone. And if this is a musician’s book, it is also -and powerfully—a griot’s praise song.
–Kenneth A. McClane, W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Literature Emeritus, Cornell University

Norm Mattox writes elegant poem/equations with answers we need for the deep corrections. “stories change lives, the village narratives integrate the world” Mattox is a master poem architect. I encourage you to settle for a while in the stunning spaces he creates.
–K Shuck, author of “in the era of covid, under a smoke filled sky” and 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco