Jr Richard Matzen

Going Jr Richard Matzen

Going's narrative poetry immerses the reader into the world of the Los Angeles commute and shares the story of a fifty-year-old commuter who stops the commute, joins park life, and experiences jazz, the landscape, and his parents' deaths. During the summer of 2010, in other words, while commuting, Going's narrator re-experiences writing poetry and recalling past days of listening to jazz and blues, and bebop players. Then, he begins to stop regularly at a large Los Angeles park and interrupts his commuting with writing more poetry. Unwittingly, at first, he joins park life and feels its tension with commuter life. Los Angeles commuters typically travel one-to-a-car and seem to believe they're always going to places even when stuck in traffic jams! But, park visitors usually come with a group and connect more intimately to each other in the park. So, as Going's narrator lives in this conflicted world, he also displaces himself into recollections of growing up in the Midwest, and he comes to terms with the death of both his parents that summer. In short, the tensions between the need to stay in one place and never totally being in one place makes Going into a personal story with vivid pictures of Los Angeles life in the commute and at a park.