Book Summary and Reviews of Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder

Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder

Come on All You Ghosts

by Matthew Zapruder

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  • Published:
  • Sep 2010, 96 pages
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Book Summary

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 ...

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Zapruder's third collection of hip, quirkily haunting yet surprisingly earnest poems is his best and most beautiful." - Publishers Weekly

"Zapruder's innovative style is provocative in its unusual juxtapositions of line, image and enjambments. ... Highly recommended." - Library Journal

This information about Come on All You Ghosts was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Matthew Zapruder

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.

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