Come on All You Ghosts

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 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 …

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.