From Powells.com
Hot new releases and under-the-radar gems for adults and kids.
Staff Pick
Matthew Zapruder is a fantastic poet, and an equally fantastic advocate for why poetry continues to be essential. Why Poetry? is a powerful, beautifully written guide to connecting poetry to all readers and making it an accessible and necessary part of our everyday lives. Recommended By Jill O., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
An impassioned call for a return to reading poetry and an incisive argument for poetry's accessibility to all readers, by critically acclaimed poet Matthew Zapruder
In Why Poetry, award-winning poet Matthew Zapruder argues that the way we have been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. He takes on what it is that poetry--and poetry alone--can do. In lively, lilting prose, he shows us how that misunderstanding interferes with our direct experience of poetry and creates the sense of confusion or inadequacy that many of us feel when faced with a poem.
Zapruder explores what poems are and how we can read them so that we can, as Whitman wrote, "possess the origin of all poems" without the aid of any teacher or expert. Most important, he asks how reading poetry can help us to lead our lives with greater meaning and purpose.
Anchored in poetic analysis and steered through Zapruder's personal experience of coming to the form, Why Poetry is engaging and conversational, even as it makes a passionate argument for the necessity of poetry in an age when information is constantly being mistaken for knowledge. While providing a simple reading method for approaching poems and illuminating concepts like associative movement, metaphor, and negative capability, Zapruder explicitly confronts the obstacles that readers face when they encounter poetry to show us that poetry can be read, and enjoyed, by anyone.
Review
“A consistently surprising work that shows novices how they can navigate poetry while providing a wonderful re-education for anyone who was taught to dissect a poem as if it were a dead frog. Even serious writers will find fresh inspiration here.” Washington Post
Review
“Zapruder has written a book intended to help mend the rift between poems and readers...I am happy to report that he is refreshingly successful in making his case. Why Poetry is intelligent, straightforward, lucid, and cleanly reasoned.” Los Angeles Review of Books
Review
“Even for people who already eat poetry three times a day, Why Poetry still offers a refreshingly convivial discussion of poetry’s purpose in a world where it’s too often made to seem like public therapy or pointless frippery.” Paste Magazine
Review
“[Zapruder] writes with clear and inviting prose...Why Poetry is part-inspiration, part-guidebook, and part literary memoir....Zapruder’s spiritual undercurrent raises Why Poetry into something rare: the cogent and lively argument that poetry truly matters, fueled by passion rather than pretense.” The Millions
Review
“The pleasure in Zapruder’s book is in going beyond those feelings into an exploration into the hows and whys of poetry....It recaptures that which draws us to poetry as children, while showing us the even deeper pleasures we are capable of as adults.” Chicago Tribune
Review
“Refreshingly humble and direct... Zapruder is the ideal narrator to debunk mistaken ideas about the art and claim that the ways we teach poetry are what prevent us from enjoying it...Why Poetry casts its net wide and hauls in a splendid bounty.” San Francisco Chronicle
About the Author
Matthew Zapruder is the author of four collections of poetry. His poetry, essays, and translations have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Tin House, and The Believer. An associate professor in the Saint Mary’s College of California MFA program and English department, he is also editor at large at Wave Books and, from 2016 to 2017, was the editor of the poetry page of the New York Times Magazine. He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife and son.