What Are the Men Writing in the Sugar?

By Matty Bennett

Rebel Satori is excited to announce the debut collection from up and coming poet Matty Bennett, What Are the Men Writing in the Sugar?

Matty Bennett is the author of What Are the Men Writing in the Sugar? and is a poet, journalist, teacher, and coach. Bennett’s passion for LGBTQ writing and activism blossomed during his undergraduate years at Syracuse University where he earned degrees in English and psychology. He went on to earn his MFA in poetry from Virginia Tech. His work has been published in many literary journals, including Juked, Homology Lit, Cardiff Review, Watershed Review, Bookends Review, and more. He currently teaches high school English in Providence, RI.

"When Matty Bennett writes, “I put everything on display,” it doesn’t feel like he’s showing off, but showing in. These poems ripple with sweetness and vulnerability, they bubble with details that are as carefully chosen as they are skillfully rendered. Bennett wants to “be a man in love and let that be everything.” Can it be everything? This engaging, endearing collection reminds us that it can." —Mark Bibbins, author of 13th Balloon

"Matty Bennett’s debut collection is a beauty of a book, full of quirky, romantic, thoroughly original poems brimming with Sicilian landscapes, gay life in America, and the complex passions shared by young men." —Jeff Mann, author of A Romantic Mann and Redneck Bouquet

"The poems in Bennett’s debut collection are intimate and full of longing, as well as an optimism that seems to arrive from the longing itself. He knows that it’s better to want something, and to live in the world, than not to. This book is romantic and truly accessible. I loved reading it." — Alex Dimitrov, author of Love and Other Poems

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rebel Satori Press
• Release date: Apr 20, 2021

Matty Bennett

Matty Bennett is the author of What Are the Men Writing in the Sugar? and is a poet, journalist, teacher, and coach. Bennett’s passion for LGBTQ writing and activism blossomed during his undergraduate years at Syracuse University where he earned degrees in English and psychology. He went on to earn his MFA in poetry from Virginia Tech. His work has been published in many literary journals, including Juked, Homology Lit, Cardiff Review, Watershed Review, Bookends Review, and more. He currently teaches high school English in Providence, RI.

Book preview

NPR SAYS THIS IS CUFFING SEASON

Sheets of ice, everywhere. Or, maybe, 

future ocean waves lapping against our feet. 

Winter, even at its cruelest, brings contingence, 

and, gratefully, my affinity for you. In retrospect, 

I’m glad I spent three years playing pool in bars 

instead of writing poems. The ice, it’s fine. 

My shoes have no traction. I will pull you down 

with me, beams of headlights merging, 

edifying us in the street. Yes, I’ll admit, I am 

artless, a clodhopper, if you will—touch me 

anywhere. There is so much I need to tell you, 

like how my hands, cracked and cold, smoldered 

when I shut your car door, when I walked up 

my east side steps, alone, when I scrolled 

through hundreds of men, solitary, still, and, also, 

how you are, all at once, everything I want 

and completely unknown to me. I want to put 

my bare hands on the ice, speed up this process. 

Side-step. Oncoming traffic. Your steady hand, slowly 

dismantling a giant Jenga tower, and then, relief.

10-DAY FORECAST

I’ve lost those Saturdays 

of crashing. I used to be 

an architect of clouds,