Alphabetica

Born 1942 in Fargo, ND, Juliet Mattila received a BA and MA from the University of California at Berkeley, a PhD from the University of Chicago, and an MFA from the University of Iowa. While in Chicago, she worked on and served as editor in chief of The Chicago Review. She taught English at Loyola University of Chicago (1968–71) and at the University of Rochester (1971–6) before directing the Academic Advising Center at the University of Iowa (1982–2000). Her poems, essays, and reviews appeared in a variety of periodicals and anthologies, including The Yale Review, The Paris Review, Studies in English Literature, and Isotope. Several of her radio plays were performed on the Iowa Radio Project, which aired on fifty NPR stations (1992). Both a prize-winning poet and photographer, she died at her home in Santa Fe, July 19, 2023.

"To see through the eyes of the poet and photographer Juliet Mattila is revelatory. In moments of quiet reflection, the poet opens us to the strange healing powers of emptiness, silence, and solitude. She sings of the mystery in the shadows of night, in the corners of a room in “The Invisible Spectrum” where “light around the door / hesitates, then stops and finally surrenders / in shadows.” Ordinary objects become “containers of radiance.” Among the unexpected marvels in this new collection is a meditation on clouds in “Midsummer” which asks: “What does it mean to think of clouds / tumbled in the gorgeous recitative / of sky?” In such images as the “calligraphy of trees” and the wind’s “unglossable speech,’” the poet invites us to share her animating desire to “Let the work of the senses / pass from art / into faith.” Juliet Mattila gives us faith in art in every line of her poetry, honoring the great mystery of being human, radiantly alive to the wonders and power of the natural world."—Helen H. Houghton