WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.100 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:01.100 --> 00:00:01.760 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:01.760 --> 00:00:06.089 align:middle line:90% 00:00:06.089 --> 00:00:10.680 align:middle line:84% A Matthew Zapruder poem is a strange, sincere, funny, 00:00:10.680 --> 00:00:16.730 align:middle line:84% melancholic, capacious entity and unmistakably his own. 00:00:16.730 --> 00:00:19.370 align:middle line:84% The poems often contain the flint 00:00:19.370 --> 00:00:24.380 align:middle line:84% of his poet ancestors, Dickinson, Tate, Keats, Celan, 00:00:24.380 --> 00:00:25.970 align:middle line:90% Whitman, Moore. 00:00:25.970 --> 00:00:30.530 align:middle line:84% These sparks fly off the wheels as the poems go. 00:00:30.530 --> 00:00:33.650 align:middle line:90% He apostrophizes and odes. 00:00:33.650 --> 00:00:39.150 align:middle line:84% He engages syntax in subtle ways but to great effect. 00:00:39.150 --> 00:00:43.100 align:middle line:84% Many of the poems in his latest collection, Father's Day, 00:00:43.100 --> 00:00:46.940 align:middle line:84% are carved from one long sentence then razored 00:00:46.940 --> 00:00:52.610 align:middle line:84% into short lines, and the effect of it is a kind of kinesthesia, 00:00:52.610 --> 00:00:55.680 align:middle line:90% harkening waterfall. 00:00:55.680 --> 00:00:59.100 align:middle line:84% At times, these waterfalls are carved from acrylic 00:00:59.100 --> 00:01:03.370 align:middle line:84% and found in a futuristic mall court, food court. 00:01:03.370 --> 00:01:06.240 align:middle line:84% But regardless, you, dear reader, 00:01:06.240 --> 00:01:09.060 align:middle line:84% will tumble down and through these poems, 00:01:09.060 --> 00:01:12.060 align:middle line:84% and at the bottom, rather than death, 00:01:12.060 --> 00:01:17.990 align:middle line:84% find yourself very much alive in a pool of silence. 00:01:17.990 --> 00:01:22.880 align:middle line:84% Other Zapruder's poems employ longer lines, syntactically 00:01:22.880 --> 00:01:24.470 align:middle line:90% stretched phrases. 00:01:24.470 --> 00:01:28.160 align:middle line:84% These create the feeling of leaves, like maple leaves, 00:01:28.160 --> 00:01:31.190 align:middle line:84% floating down from the arms of trees. 00:01:31.190 --> 00:01:34.370 align:middle line:84% And at the end, you, dear reader, 00:01:34.370 --> 00:01:39.410 align:middle line:84% are left in leaf piles of maybes where the white tailed deer 00:01:39.410 --> 00:01:42.560 align:middle line:90% of sadness are looking on. 00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:46.440 align:middle line:90% Yes, we must stand in mystery. 00:01:46.440 --> 00:01:51.950 align:middle line:84% The frozen eye of clarity cannot take everything in. 00:01:51.950 --> 00:01:55.250 align:middle line:84% "I have done my best to leave behind the machine. 00:01:55.250 --> 00:02:01.320 align:middle line:84% Anyone with a mind who cares can enter," he writes. 00:02:01.320 --> 00:02:04.020 align:middle line:84% Zapruder is not only a prolific poet. 00:02:04.020 --> 00:02:07.590 align:middle line:84% He is also a translator, a musician, a professor, 00:02:07.590 --> 00:02:12.780 align:middle line:84% an editor of Wave Books, an essayist, and a memoirist. 00:02:12.780 --> 00:02:16.440 align:middle line:84% In Why Poetry, he talks to us about how 00:02:16.440 --> 00:02:21.210 align:middle line:84% to teach poetry and talks to us with humility about how 00:02:21.210 --> 00:02:22.890 align:middle line:90% we are doing it wrong. 00:02:22.890 --> 00:02:28.810 align:middle line:84% It's a book I highly recommend to all the teachers that I know. 00:02:28.810 --> 00:02:32.770 align:middle line:84% His latest book is a memoir, which 00:02:32.770 --> 00:02:37.610 align:middle line:84% he'll be reading from tonight in part called Story of a Poem, 00:02:37.610 --> 00:02:40.840 align:middle line:84% is currently a nominee for the National Book Critics 00:02:40.840 --> 00:02:44.270 align:middle line:90% Award in this category. 00:02:44.270 --> 00:02:48.560 align:middle line:84% This book feels like an unfurling and unfurling 00:02:48.560 --> 00:02:54.020 align:middle line:84% and unfurling of experience and self-portrait 00:02:54.020 --> 00:02:58.190 align:middle line:84% within the frames of fatherhood, of parenting 00:02:58.190 --> 00:03:02.270 align:middle line:84% a neurodiverse child, of being a writer and a poet 00:03:02.270 --> 00:03:07.920 align:middle line:84% and a citizen in the face of all we now face. 00:03:07.920 --> 00:03:12.870 align:middle line:84% His mind truly does wring beauty from the suffering air, 00:03:12.870 --> 00:03:15.270 align:middle line:84% and that's an intentional misprision 00:03:15.270 --> 00:03:18.090 align:middle line:90% from Mary Karr's blurb. 00:03:18.090 --> 00:03:19.065 align:middle line:90% You'll see why. 00:03:19.065 --> 00:03:22.290 align:middle line:90% 00:03:22.290 --> 00:03:24.750 align:middle line:90% If I can turn this. 00:03:24.750 --> 00:03:27.210 align:middle line:84% I want to mention he has a new book of poems 00:03:27.210 --> 00:03:31.350 align:middle line:84% forthcoming from Scribner called I Love Hearing Your Dreams, 00:03:31.350 --> 00:03:36.310 align:middle line:84% and we will patiently impatiently be waiting for it. 00:03:36.310 --> 00:03:39.220 align:middle line:84% We're so fortunate to be listening in tonight. 00:03:39.220 --> 00:03:44.740 align:middle line:84% Doing so, as he himself puts it, before the enormous spiral 00:03:44.740 --> 00:03:47.710 align:middle line:90% of wrecking balls in a dress-- 00:03:47.710 --> 00:03:50.620 align:middle line:84% and I think I see Dickinson here-- 00:03:50.620 --> 00:03:53.230 align:middle line:90% made of laughing glass. 00:03:53.230 --> 00:03:56.710 align:middle line:84% All the ghosts are here listening tonight too. 00:03:56.710 --> 00:04:00.370 align:middle line:84% Please join me in welcoming Matt Zapruder. 00:04:00.370 --> 00:04:02.220 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE]