So this blogging thing is still new to me. I just penned a rather extensive blog entry about Matthea Harvey and lost it to a computer glitch. When my neighbor kindly lets me "steal" his Internet connection, I normally just check the weather report or read my hometown newspaper. No one told me that some blogs get lost in cyberspace and never appear on the webpage. Fortunately, for moments such as this, Matthea Harvey's poetry reminds 21st century readers that missed connections can offer an opportunity to be more in-tune with life's music.

"Modern Life" by Matthea Harvey is a collection of poems about — well, modern life. The imagined world Harvey writes is stark and heavy. It isn't exactly a wasteland tour, but Harvey's poems offer an exploration of the recovered dreams we glimpse in puddles. Her poetry conjures up a world where items created for our ease rarely work.

Consider one of my favorites from "Modern Life":

Out of Order

Today it's about truth and hope
and there are no ha-ha's
between me and the living.
World, I'm no one
to complain about you.

Harvey, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, shares lessons on navigating modernity's trapdoors and repairing broken links. I hope you enjoy this book of poems.