Synopses & Reviews
"Charming, melancholy, hip."Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Zapruder's innovative style is provocative in its unusual juxtapositions of line, image and enjambments. . . . Highly recommended."Library Journal
Matthew Zapruder's third book mixes humor and invention with love and loss, as when the breath of a lover is compared to "a field of titanium gravestones / growing warmer in the sun." The title poem is an elegy for the heroes and mentors in the poet's lifefrom David Foster Wallace to the poet's father. Zapruder's poems are direct and surprising, and throughout the book he wrestles with the desire to do well, to make art, and to face the vast events of the day.
Look out scientists! Today the unemployment rate
is 9.4 percent. I have no idea what that means. I tried
to think about it harder for a while. Then
tried standing in an actual stance of mystery
and not knowing towards the world.
Which is my job. As is staring at the back yard
and for one second believing I am actually
rising away from myself. Which is maybe
what I have in common right now with you . . .
Matthew Zapruder holds degrees from Amherst College, UC Berkeley, and the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of two previous books, including The Pajamaist, which won the William Carlos Williams Award and was honored by Library Journal with a "Best Poetry Book of the Year" listing. He lives in San Francisco and is an editor at Wave Books.
Review
"Zapruder's innovative style is provocative in its unusual juxtapositions of line, image and enjambments.... Highly recommended." Library Journal
Review
"[A]s brain-teasing as his wonderfully strange yet exactly right imagery is, the formal elements of his poems are so liquid and magnetizing as to be invisible....[T]hese are deeply felt, exciting, and caring poems." (Starred Review) Booklist
Synopsis
Matthew Zapruder's third book mixes humor and invention with love and loss, as when the breath of a lover is compared to "a field of titanium gravestones / growing warmer in the sun." The title poem is an elegy for the heroes and mentors in the poet's life from David Foster Wallace to the poet's father. Zapruder's poems are direct and surprising, and throughout the book he wrestles with the desire to do well, to make art, and to face the vast events of the day.
Look out scientists! Today the unemployment rate
is 9.4 percent. I have no idea what that means. I tried
to think about it harder for a while. Then
tried standing in an actual stance of mystery
and not knowing towards the world.
Which is my job. As is staring at the back yard
and for one second believing I am actually
rising away from myself. Which is maybe
what I have in common right now with you...
Synopsis
Written by one of the country's leading younger poets, Zapruder's poems don't merely attempt beauty, they attain it.” Boston Review
About the Author
Matthew Zapruder holds degrees from Amherst College, UC Berkeley, and the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of two collections of poetry, American Linden and The Pajamaist, which won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and was honored by Library Journal as one of the top ten poetry volumes of 2006. He lives in San Francisco, teaches poetry as a member of the permanent faculty of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and works as an editor for Wave Books.