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    Father's Day
    Father's Day
    Father's Day
    Ebook163 pages1 hour

    Father's Day

    By Matthew Zapruder

    ()

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    About this ebook

    "As seen in the The New York Times Book Review

    ""In characteristically short lines and pithy, slippery language like predictive text from a lucid dream, Zapruder’s fifth collection grapples with fatherhood as well as larger questions of influence and inheritance and obligation."" —The New York Times

    “[Zapruder] presents powerfully nuanced and vivid verse about the limitations of poetry to enact meaningful change in a world spiraling into callousness; yet despite poetry’s supposed constraints, Zapruder’s verse offers solace and an invaluable blueprint for empathy.” ―Publishers Weekly, starred review

    “Zapruder’s new book, Father’s Day, is firmly situated in its (and our) political moment, and is anchored by a compelling gravity and urgency.” ―The Washington Post

    The poems in Matthew Zapruder’s fifth collection ask, how can one be a good father, partner, and citizen in the early twenty-first century? Zapruder deftly improvises upon language and lyricism as he passionately engages with these questions during turbulent, uncertain times. Whether interrogating the personalities of the Supreme Court, watching a child grow off into a distance, or tweaking poetry critics and hipsters alike, Zapruder maintains a deeply generous sense of humor alongside a rich vein of love and moral urgency. The poems in Father’s Day harbor a radical belief in the power of wonder and awe to sustain the human project while guiding it forward.

    "
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateJan 15, 2020
    ISBN9781619322059
    Father's Day
    Author

    Matthew Zapruder

    Matthew Zapruder is the author of six collections of poetry, including Come on All You Ghosts, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Father’s Day; Why Poetry; and Story of a Poem, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the William Carlos Williams Award, a May Sarton Award from the Academy of American Arts and Sciences, and a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship. His poetry has been adapted and performed by Gabriel Kahane and Brooklyn Rider and Attacca Quartet at Carnegie Hall and San Francisco Performances and was the libretto for Vespers for a New Dark Age, a piece by Missy Mazzoli commissioned for the Ecstatic Music Festival at Carnegie Hall. He was Guest Editor of Best American Poetry 2022, and from 2016 to 2017, he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the weekly Poetry Column for The New York Times Magazine. He lives with his wife and son in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is editor at large at Wave Books, and teaches in the MFA in creative writing program at Saint Mary’s College of California.

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      Book preview

      Father's Day - Matthew Zapruder

      POEM FOR DOOM

      Birds don’t lie

      they are never lost

      above the earth

      they never think

      I stole this form

      or blue is the best

      I listen to it

      singing my old man

      is far away

      singing American

      songs stolen

      from those who lived

      in what now is

      but was not

      the park which makes

      me love him

      I am eating an orange

      someone grabbed

      from nature

      over me I hear

      controlled mechanical

      obsidian dragonflies

      search for anarchists

      for a long time

      I went to school

      in the palm of my life

      carrying a stone

      obeying the law

      of semblance

      now each night

      I bring it back

      down to the land

      asphodels cover

      then I wake

      and take my son

      out on the porch

      to say hello

      everything hello

      green hills that slept

      hello tree

      drawn on the side

      of a white truck

      exorably rumbling

      toward some hole

      hello magnolia

      whose pink

      and white blossoms

      have left it

      for where

      oh sweet doom

      we are all going

      then behind us

      we close

      the black door

      with the golden knob

      and sit

      in the great

      chair morning light

      through the shades

      always makes

      look like a dream

      forest throne

      all around

      our subjects

      the shadow trees

      rise up

      their private thoughts

      filling the room

      I take them

      like an animal

      with gentle

      ungrateful ceremony

      from a leaf

      takes dew

      I WAKE UP BEFORE THE MACHINE

      I wake up before the machine

      made of all the choices

      we are together not making

      lights up this part of Oakland

      it’s dark so I can imagine

      another grid humming in the east

      already people are deciding

      it’s election day

      and I lie in the western

      pre-decision darkness and almost

      hear that silent voice

      saying go down there

      the coffee needs you

      to place it in the device

      its next form will help you remember

      daylight is coming

      but dreams do not go away

      they just move off and change

      your mind is a tree

      on a little hill

      surrounded by grasses

      that look up and say

      father wind

      loves moving through you

      DECEMBER

      At first we all

      went down to the lake

      to hold hands,

      all the multicolored

      signs said

      with love

      we will resist,

      over my head

      I lifted my son

      so he could see

      what people

      look like

      when they hear

      the song Imagine,

      a few weeks later

      again people stood

      at the water,

      this time at night

      holding flashlights

      to say to fire

      you came

      without permission

      and took our young

      gentle soldiers

      for art

      so we will show

      even with our old

      technology

      we can see

      each other

      without you,

      others booed

      the mayor which was

      my friend said

      understandable,

      I don’t know

      what is anymore,

      everyone understands

      in a different

      contradictory way

      the so far purely

      abstract

      catastrophe

      so many millions

      of choices

      brought us,

      not too far

      from the water

      I sat on the couch

      below the sound

      of blades

      drinking amber

      numbing fluid

      my thoughts

      chopping the air

      feeling not

      what is the word

      to be a father

      equipped,

      mine never told me

      where to hide

      a brick of gold,

      for a long time

      I have known

      no voices

      will come at last

      to tell us how

      to stop pretending

      we don’t know

      if it is not

      safe for some

      it is not

      for anyone.

      MY LIFE

      four years ago

      on Martin Luther King Day

      in the afternoon

      the little strip

      said it was time,

      so we did it twice

      laughing through

      that grim comical

      despair familiar

      to all modern

      conceivers,

      it was magical

      only that it worked

      but now I know

      it was then

      my life began,

      we made so

      many plans

      circumstances

      already waited

      to obviate,

      suddenly he was born,

      a room full of blood

      and shouting,

      he stayed calm

      sleeping on my chest

      a long time while

      they sewed you up,

      he and I

      in a room alone

      under a soft white light,

      one nurse came

      to say it was all right,

      you were not

      but you were there,

      I talked to him,

      whatever I said

      I don’t remember,

      then came the proud

      sleepless happy

      sorrow months

      then slow realizing

      playground dread,

      the year

      of diagnosis when

      our life kept

      being a place

      for worsening fears

      in enviable comfort

      to occur as we

      graciously received

      the humiliation

      of being the ones

      gratefully not to be,

      those many hours

      in the

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