Very impressive... Rader has craft to burn and a compelling dark vision of life.
-Zachariah Wells, Quill & Quire
Constructs a series of solid images and then takes them apart to see what makes them tick. It's hard to believe this is Rader's first book... The poet has the ability to see strange things, the quirky unseen details that might be difficult to mention... He documents that continuing sensual edge between the bright light and the burn.
-Jacqueline Turner, The Georgia Straight
These poems are the work of an artist who sees things differently... [and] provide illuminating bursts of insights and recognition. This is brawny, challenging work.
-Statesman Journal, Salem, Oregon
"What's most striking about Rader's voice is the lack of attitudinizing; the brutal scenes he describes (the accidental crushing of a kitten's throat under a child's heel, a rape, a man hiding a dead body in the forest) are presented with respectful care and integrity, finished in language of high gloss... Rader's speaker possess the fragile lucidity of one who encounters the world in all its violence and beauty."
-Linda Besner, The Dominion
...an environment loaded with both beauty and cruelty, where the unusual interactions between characters shape their perception of the world they live in... Rader's speaker possesses a cold eye, able to accept the world as one filled with both beauty and violence. This impressive debut collection has me looking forward to what the future holds for this talented new poet.
-Greg Santos, PoetryReviews.ca
With Miraculous Hours, Matt Rader has hit the ground running. The poetic voice is confident and for the most part the poems are admirably sure-footed. A kind of calm self-possessedness was the right note to strike. The pieces in this collection are not exactly recollections in tranquility, their often dramatic subjects and content requiring a cool hand at the switch to avoid the slide into melodrama. Rader's control of the language and tone mean that this largely works... In Rader's work, the urban and domestic is as much a wilderness as wilderness is, charged with discovery and danger.
-Karen Solie, Event
This is the real and strange British Columbia, where rough-hewn frontage roads lead to ancient middens, and the fringes of every little town are choked with salal, fireweed, and abandoned logging equipment... Rader casts an uneasy eye on this subject matter, serving up neither an environmentalist's usual stew of rant and lament, nor any condescending canonization of the tough and sometimes wild people who necessarily populate such places... Rader [has] a keen eye for nature's hidden and blind machinations; an abundance of that rare poetic skill, knowing when to stop; and that virtue which matters most in fine poets, an evident but unflamboyant work ethic.
-Lyle Neff, Books In Canada
