Ghosts, machines, etc.

The other day, I finished reading Matthew Zapruder's book of poetry Come On All You Ghosts. There are many reasons, both trivial and not, for me to like it. The trivial ones include our shared alma mater, and references in the poems to artists I like (Neko Case, David Foster Wallace). The non-trivial are the poems themselves and how they're written. While I occasionally lost the thread reading a poem, I always assume that's my failing. One of my biggest problems in writing poems is slavishly sticking to narrative form. This is not a problem (at least in the final product) for Zapruder.

Okay, so now I'll let the poems speak for themselves, in excerpts, anyway, below. I also recommend the poem "Letter to a Lover," one of my new favorite love poems, which can be found in its entirety on the Copper Canyon Press website.

I can't help but love this one:

"...Come home
those who love a librarian aspect. I am one,
for give her time and she will answer any question
no matter how spiral, no matter how glass,
so slow to judgment you can sit among her
like a reading room and read and think
until the docents come, they move as trained,
as trained they place a careful hand on our shoulder."
-from "Never Before," p. 38


I like these opening lines that get at postmodernism and reality TV:

"In old black and white documentaries
sometimes you can see
the young at a concert or demonstration
staring in a certain way as if
a giant golden banjo
is somewhere sparkling
just too far off to hear.
They really didn't know there was a camera.'
-from "Global Warming," p. 83


The last lines of the book refer back to Zapruder comparing a poem to a machine:

"Come on all you ghosts,

you can tell me now,
I have seen one of you becoming
and I am no longer afraid,

just sad for everyone
but also happy this morning I woke
next to the warm skin

of my beloved. I do not know
what terrible marvels
tomorrow will bring

but ghosts if I must join you
you and I know
I have done my best to leave

behind this machine
anyone with a mind
who cares can enter."
-from "Come On All You Ghosts," pp. 107-8

All quotations from Zapruder, Matthew. Come On All You Ghosts. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2010.