Why Poetry
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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 takes on what it is that poetry—and poetry alone—can do. Zapruder argues that the way we have been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. 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 it.
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 he provides a simple reading method for approaching poems and illuminates 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.
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Matthew Zapruder. (2017). Why Poetry. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Matthew Zapruder. 2017. Why Poetry. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Matthew Zapruder, Why Poetry. HarperCollins, 2017.
MLA Citation (style guide)Matthew Zapruder. Why Poetry. HarperCollins, 2017.
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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.
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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 takes on what it is that poetry—and poetry alone—can do. Zapruder argues that the way we have been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. 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 it.
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 he provides a simple reading method for approaching poems and illuminates 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.
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"Zapruder's writing is accessible, easygoing, and welcoming, as if he's sitting right there talking us through the poems." — Kirkus Reviews
"In many ways a marvelous book...This passionate book, aimed at would-be poets, would work well both in a college classroom and in the hands of ordinary readers." — Publishers Weekly
"[A] diligently executed investigation. . . . Conversational yet eloquent, accessible and intelligent, Zapruder considers a range of writing on poetics and the craft of composition and includes close reads and smart explication." — Booklist
"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
"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
"Why Poetry is a self-described 'impassioned call for a return to reading poetry.' . . . Zapruder is a brainy and passionate advocate." — Seattle Weekly
"[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
"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
"Poetry frustrates people . . . Every now and then one of the poets, in turn, steps up helpfully to explain how to read the stuff. In his friendly new book, Why Poetry, poet, editor and teacher Matthew Zapruder does this very thing with unusual clarity and generosity." — Newsday
"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
"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
"Thinking about why and how I love poetry in the presence of another passionate reader left me feeling renewed. Both the page and the world seemed to burn a little more brightly. I felt a bit more writerly and a bit more human, too." — NPR
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April 3, 2017
This is in many ways a marvelous book. Zapruder (Sun Bear), poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine, warms to his subject—the importance of poetry and what makes it tick—as the book gets past the somewhat wordy introduction and overly autobiographical first few chapters. He shows that poetry “connects elements that one wouldn’t have expected” to surprise the reader with an awareness of associations perhaps not quite in the range of conscious thought. Poetry, unhampered by having to fulfill other functions, offers a pure interaction with language and thus the possibility of catching elusive moments of illumination. If Zapruder does not quite succeed in convincing readers that poetry differs entirely from other writing genres, his analyses of a wide range of individual poets, including Robert Hass, John Keats, Audre Lorde, W.S. Merwin, and Walt Whitman, offer insight about the use of metaphor, symbol, absence, and negative capability, and prompt conversation about his conclusions. Ending with a politically charged afterword, “Poetry and Poets in a Time of Crisis,” this passionate book, aimed at would-be poets, would work well both in a college classroom and in the hands of ordinary readers. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency.
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May 15, 2017
Helping readers overcome their ambivalence about poetry.As a fine poet in his own right and editor at large at the independent poetry press Wave Books as well as the poetry page editor at the New York Times Magazine, Zapruder (English/St. Mary's Coll.; Sun Bear, 2014, etc.) is highly qualified to take on the age-old question. The author takes a personal approach, mixing memoir, analysis, and argument. As a high school senior in 1985, he dreaded the poetry unit. He picked W.H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" to analyze. After reading the opening lines, "something just clicked," and he understood "that there was something only poetry could do." After graduate work in Russian language and literature, Zapruder decided to pursue a degree in creative writing and never looked back. Now, he wants to share his love and knowledge of poetry. Even if readers won't feel like the "top[s] of [their] head[s] were taken off," as Emily Dickinson described it, Zapruder hopes to show how "poetry creates the poetic state of mind in a reader" through a poem's form, its leaps of association, and how it plays with the nature of language itself. He first guides readers through literal readings of three poems to demonstrate how to read a poem and dig down into its core to freely enjoy the poem for what it is. Zapruder's writing is accessible, easygoing, and welcoming, as if he's sitting right there talking us through the poems. Throughout, he uses numerous poems to clearly explain how each achieves something unique. His discussion of the enigma of line breaks is first-rate. He writes about how he fell in love with W.S. Merwin's dark and often surreal collection The Lice (1967) and how a Frank O'Hara poem, "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island," now helps him "in this time of crisis, and beyond." To the poetry skeptics, what have you got to lose?COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from May 15, 2017
Zapruder is a poet (Come On All You Ghosts), professor (English, Saint Mary's Coll. of California), and editor (New York Times Magazine), but perhaps most importantly, he is a sensitive and perceptive reader along the lines of Hugh Kenner--a presence the literary world sorely lacks. Addressing his titular statement through a mixture of memoir and poetry analysis, Zapruder argues against the scholarly fashion of presenting poetry as something difficult and arcane. He proposes instead direct experience of the poem as the only way readers can overcome prejudices and fears induced by teachers turning poems into veiled coded messages, puzzles, or prompts for an AP exam. Anchoring his claims about poetry in the idea that a reader should be able to trust what is said on the surface of a poem, he walks us through pieces by W.S. Merwin, John Ashbery, W.H. Auden, and Emily Dickinson (among others), demonstrating time and again how reading poetry isn't about uncovering hidden meanings but slowing down long enough to appreciate what awaits on the page, echoes in our ears, and reverberates in our soul. VERDICT A great addition to every poetry collection.--Herman Sutter, St. Agnes Acad., Houston
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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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 takes on what it is that poetry—and poetry alone—can do. Zapruder argues that the way we have been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. 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 it.
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...
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