787 Why Poetry with Matthew Zapruder Encore

Summary

Podcast Summary: The History of Literature - "Why Poetry with Matthew Zapruder (Encore)"

Podcast: The History of Literature
Host: Jacke Wilson
Guest: Matthew Zapruder — Poet, Author of "Why Poetry"
Episode: 787
Date: March 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this encore presentation, Jacke Wilson revisits his insightful 2018 conversation with acclaimed poet and professor Matthew Zapruder. Centered around Zapruder’s accessible book Why Poetry, the episode explores the cultural reputation of poetry, why it often feels inaccessible, how poetry should be experienced, and the poet’s unique relationship to language. Zapruder challenges long-held educational conventions, seeks to liberate poetry from academic jargon, and advocates for re-igniting poetry’s vitality for readers and writers alike.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Poetry Feels Inaccessible

• Cultural Disconnect:
  • Poetry is often perceived as difficult or elitist. Jacke observes, "It didn't used to be this way. It seems like poetry used to be viewed as something more accessible and available to all people." (15:00)
• Three Main Obstacles (per Zapruder):
  1. Needing Excessive Context/Background:
     • The belief that one must know all the references, history, and background to "get" a poem is limiting.
     • Zapruder: “To say that [context] is required... before you even encounter the poem is just not correct.” (30:46)
  2. The Myth of 'Coded' Language:
     • Poetry is not inherently cryptic.
     • “We're taught that the words in poems…don't mean what they seem to mean. That's... factually incorrect.” (29:31)
  3. The Demand for a Big 'Message':
     • The habit of extracting a grand, capital-S “Significance” can flatten a poem’s experience.
     • “I try to ... focus much more on the experience of reading the poem and what it does to your mind … not just treating it like a kind of content or message delivery system.” (32:58)

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2. Zapruder’s Personal Journey Into Poetry

• Fell in love with language early, particularly through reading Russian literature.
• Discovered a love for the materiality and play of language, rather than storytelling or prose.
• “What I was really interested in doing was kind of playing with the material of language and seeing what further meaning could be made.” (19:05)
• Early influences included witnessing readings by established poets like Gary Snyder and Adrienne Rich in intimate settings.

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3. The Power and Pleasure of Language

• Auden Example:
  • Both recall the shock and pleasure of encountering W.H. Auden’s “Museé des Beaux Arts”—specifically, how phrases like "about suffering, the old masters" grab attention with their syntax and musicality.
  • “I just geeked out on the syntax of it.” (21:23)
• Language Play:
  • Poets are “people who know [the deeper meanings and connections of words]—have a deeper sense of those things.” (47:44)
  • “It's not that poets are more sensitive emotionally…it's that they…have this relationship to language.” (49:16)

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4. The Poet’s Freedom and the Process of Writing

• Poetic Freedom vs. Prose Utility:
  • The poet’s singular duty is to language, not utility or explanation or storytelling.
  • “Every true poem is marked somewhere by that freedom and that choice.” (35:45)
• Comparison to Other Arts:
  • “Painters get to just paint ... musicians get to just play music ... poets permit themselves that relationship to words.” (37:07)
• Creative Process:
  • The appearance of inevitability (“intentional fallacy”) in finished poems hides an underlying process of instinct, revision, and mistake.
  • “A lot of it’s trial and error as a poet. A lot of it’s instinct. A lot of it’s just messing around.” (45:12)

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5. Poetry’s Value and Social Relevance

• Beyond Instrumentality:
  • Pushback against demands for poetry to be socially useful or to advance causes above its own aesthetic or linguistic inquiry.
  • “Poems are about freedom and play ... anarchic ... a spirit of disruption and play and interest.” (37:07)
• Moral/Ethical Discovery through Freedom:
  • Paradoxically, by focusing on language, poets often discover deeper moral or ethical truths (as Zapruder discusses in the context of political poetry). (39:11)

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6. How to Teach and Read Poetry Differently

• Approaching Poems On Their Own Terms:
  • Readers don’t need to decode; they can—and should—respond to poems with what they bring, getting “caught up in the gears” (42:19) of the poem’s language and music.
• Close Reading:
  • Reading poetry teaches attention, accuracy, and close observation—the core tools of deeper understanding.
  • “There’s nothing quite like the small area of a poetic text to focus one’s attention.” (51:03)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Most of the poets I know are monsters ... they're not more emotional or sensitive ... it's that they have this relationship to language.” — Matthew Zapruder (49:16)
• “We're taught that the words in poems are not ... what they seem to mean. ... [But] that's just ... factually incorrect.” — Zapruder (29:31)
• “Really what poems are about, in my opinion, is about freedom and play ... they are anarchic.” — Zapruder (37:07)
• “A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state of mind by means of words.” — Quoting Paul Valéry, discussed by both (40:48)
• “To say that [allusion or context] is required...before you even encounter the poem, I think, is just not correct.” — Zapruder (30:46)
• “You get sucked into [a poem] ... that's what it feels to me like when I read a poem I'm really connecting with.” — Zapruder (42:21)
• Asked to choose one poem as the peak of human achievement in poetry, Zapruder selects “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats:
  “I think it’s just ... it has everything in. Sounds fantastic ... It’s about a central kind of human dilemma, mortality. ... I just think it’s a perfect poem.” (57:35)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:42] — Zapruder on poets’ affinity with language, not just emotion.
• [14:58] — Introduction of Zapruder and the “Why Poetry” thesis.
• [21:06] — Zapruder’s early poetic experiences and Auden’s “Museé des Beaux Arts.”
• [29:31] — Debunking the myth that poetry is coded language.
• [32:58] — The damaging hunt for “Significance” in poetry.
• [35:45] — Zapruder on poetic freedom and what poets are “really” doing.
• [37:07] — Advocacy for play and freedom in poetry.
• [42:19] — The self-contained “machine” of a poem; the poetic state of mind.
• [47:44] — Mystical power of language and poets’ instinct.
• [51:03] — Poetry as the best tool for teaching close reading.
• [57:35] — Zapruder’s panel pick: “Ode to a Nightingale.”

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Additional Highlights

• Teaching and Accessibility:
  Zapruder collaborates with high school teachers, urging new methods for teaching poetry that avoid overemphasis on context and coded meaning. (30:46)
• Rhyme and Form:
  Zapruder appreciates formal poetry and his own process through apprenticeships with classic forms before settling on free verse. Rhyme, to him, is also conceptual: “They rhyme conceptually ... a larger idea of the chiming of concepts.” (55:14)
• Advice to Students & Readers:
  Focus on the experience, the feeling, the sound—don’t look for puzzles to decode right away.
• Personal Touches:
  Zapruder and Jacke both share personal anecdotes about their early engagement with poetry, reinforcing the deeply personal entry points available to readers.

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Conclusion

This episode offers both poetry lovers and skeptics a warm, liberating manifesto: Poetry need not be intimidating; it’s about play, language, and deepening the experience of being human. Zapruder’s blend of personal story, pedagogical insight, and infectious enthusiasm invites listeners to reclaim poetry as something both meaningful and joyfully accessible.

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Recommended Next Step:
Pick up Why Poetry by Matthew Zapruder to further explore these arguments and rediscover your own path into poetry.

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Spring starts at the Home Depot and we are bringing the heat to your backyard this season.

[Matthew Zapruder]

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[Jack Wilson]

See home depot.com pricematch for details. Hey, folks, I think we can all agree on something. The world needs more poetry. I don't mean that we need more poems. We need more poets and poetically minded people, both writers and readers and those people who do both. We need more poetry in our soul. Whatever it is that's inside human beings that makes us love, admire and appreciate poetry is something that needs nurturing. We all need that part of us to flourish. But that's just the opinion of your humble podcaster. Eight years ago, I talked to poet and author Matthew Zapruder about why Poetry. And this being the last Thursday of the month where we dip into our archives, we present that episode to you here in its entirety. Once again, why Poetry? With Matthew Zapruder from 2018. I hope you enjoy it.

[Matthew Zapruder]

The talent that poets have is that they just remember in some deep, atavistic part of themselves, like the meanings of those words and their providences and their connections. And they have this instinctive, I mean, I have an almost mystical belief in this. Language is our collective knowledge. We're not aware of those things consciously for the most part, but we know that. We know it, yeah, somewhere. And poets are just people who know it have a deeper sense of those things, I think. And it just cracks me up when I was, you know, people say, like, you know, they think that what makes somebody poet is that they're more sensitive than other people emotionally. It's like, it's like. No, I mean, most of the poets I know are monsters. You know, they're completely jerks and they're not more emotional or sensitive or whatever than other people. I mean, and it's, it's that they. It's this, it's, it's. It has to do with their relationship to language.

[Jack Wilson]

That's Matthew Zapruder discussing the special relationship that poets have to language. We'll talk to the poet and professor about his new book, why Poetry Today, on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the program. I'm Jack Wilson. We have an incredible show today. Matthew Zapruder is here. Matthew's a professor. He was the editor of the New York Times Magazine's poetry page. He's written four books of poetry himself. And he has some ideas, ideas that mean something, especially for those of us who love literature and who love poetry and who are maybe a little bit confused. Confused at why poetry has the particular reputation it does. At least here in America, at least in the wider culture, I don't think we really get poetry. We as a culture, we as individuals, we're not absorbing it in the way we could be. Matthew has identified three reasons for why that might be. Manny has some solutions for what will help us out. Let's bring poetry back, people. Let's revive it. Let's reanimate it. Let's stand breast to breast with the cosmos and open our hearts and our minds and our souls and let poetry come rushing in like spirit, spiritual waters, like that long awaited flood, the cleansing that shall be ours. Oh, excuse me. What a. What a time for an interruption. Oh, boy. Must be someone who hates poetry. Is here. Who is it? Hello. Hello.

[Matthew Zapruder]

I'm Emily Dickinson.

[Jack Wilson]

I've written a poem in honor of that impudent scallywag Jack Wilson. A new palm. Here it is. My life has stood a loaded gun

[Matthew Zapruder]

in corners till today. I listened to his podcast and sent him some money. Won't you please support the cause of

[Jack Wilson]

literature and the arts? Oh, my family. Dickinson. How appropriate. She must have heard us talking about poetry and wanted to chip in with a brand new poem. Just ignore the part where she goes all commercial. That's the thing about Emily Dickinson. Nice person, good poet, total sellout. I'm kidding, of course, but what I'm not kidding about is my appreciation for those of you who have chosen to support the show with your hard earned dollars. Or maybe they were rubles when you earned them. And maybe they weren't so hard earned. Maybe they were won in a game of chance, like our old friend Dostoevsky. Roulette. That was his game. Well, if your roulette wheel has come up lucky and you're in the mood to share your good fortune, why not head on over to patreon.com literature and join the club of patrons who are helping to make the History of Literature podcast possible at Patreon? You can sign up for a monthly donation using PayPal or a credit card. And you can give in whatever increment you like, small or large. Or you can make a one time [e-mail] shop by buying me a virtual coffee. Buy me a coffee. Buy me a beer. Buy me. Let's see, we have WH Auden today. Buy me a martini. Of course, we all remember his lines from Symmetries and Asymmetries. Could any tiger drink martinis, smoke cigars? And last as we do? I don't know the answer to that. I suspect William Blake would have had something to say about that or something to roar. No, I don't know the answer. But I do know this. I very much appreciate each and every one of the patrons, along with all the other emailers and tweeters and everyone else helping to make this show a possibility. Speaking of great shows, we have a great one today. Matthew Zapruder and Mike Palindrome will be back soon. For those of you fans of his, he'll be back with a deep dive into Franz Kafka's classic short story the Hunger Artist. So sign up now and tell all your friends to subscribe too. You won't want to miss our spring lineup. Okay, before we get to the conversation, I wanted to thank again our literature students from a few episodes ago and their wonderful teacher, Ms. AnnMarie Sheehan for submitting their questions for our recent episode, the Q and A. That was fun and I found myself very touched and inspired by these students. For those of you just joining us, Ms. Sheehan teaches in New Mexico at Highland High School, which the state has designated as, quote, failing, end quote. Ms. Sheehan's friends wonder why she wants to teach there. Why not move to a more affluent school? They ask. The reports about the school written by outsiders talk about gang related incidents, the high dropout rate, minimally effective teachers, that's another quote. And they portray the students as low income students, immigrants, children of immigrants, refugees. Well, God damn it, these are my people. These are the people I'm rooting for. We all should be. It's so easy to learn when the conditions are perfect. Try learning when the walls are crumbling around you, when you're working to help your parents make ends meet, when your family members are working two jobs or are sick or in jail or have disappeared. When you yourself are hungry, try going to school. Then try opening a book and concentrating. Then I'm telling you in my mind, these kids are heroes. So I want to thank them all and cheer for them. And here's what we're going to do. I'm sending a copy of today's book, why Poetry? The book we'll be discussing today with the author. I'm going to send a copy of that to their teacher, Ms. Anne Marie Sheehan, and I think it will be obvious after I talk to Matthew why. This book in particular is one that any teacher who cares about literature as Ms. Sheehan does, and who cares about her students, as Ms. Sheehan also does, will be glad to have a copy of this book. I'm going to include some history of literature gear in there too, a little care package of thank yous and I wanted to thank each of the students by name by first name. So here we go. I hope I'm getting these pronunciations right. My thanks go to Amethyst, Armando, Angelica Anna Claire, Gyro, Guadalupe, Juan, Edgar, Leslie, Ramiro, Daniel, Esther, Jason, Esmeralda, Connie, Tommy, Jack, Owen, Rhiannon, Fleetwood Little, Fleetwood Mac There Julia, Fernando, Alexis, Antonio Bachua, Skyla Kwong, Jesus, Tatum, Gaja, Eric, Danielle, Serenity, Naxaya, Edgar, Kevin, David, Jose, Francisco, Adal, Rosalba, Sara, Jocelyn, Janisha, Natalia, Beatrice, Flor, Cipriana, Yvonne, Carlos, Isabella, Nina, Jackson, Estefani, Zachariah, Ismail, Marion, Ricardo, Shirley and last but not least, America. My thanks to all of you young people the future and I wish you all the best. I'm glad you are working hard and fighting the good fight and I hope you find much success in your lives and somewhere on your journey. When you look back. I hope you remember your teacher, Ms. Sheehan, who cared about you deeply and I hope you find room in your busy, successful lives to read now and again, maybe a novel, maybe some poetry, and try to stretch your minds and become the best version of yourself that you can possibly be. We are all rooting for you Matthew Zapruder after this. Hey folks, starting up this podcast was not easy. So many questions and decisions and soon I'll be launching a new press selling new books, so I'm glad to have a partner on my side to help. I'll be using Shopify. You might want to give them a try too. Shopify provides inventory and payments and analytics tools so you'll get everything you need in one place. They have hundreds of ready to use templates to help you get started with an online store that matches your brand's style. And they have millions of businesses already under their belt, including exciting new brands like Magic Spoon and Momofuku and well established companies like Heinz and Mattel, and soon the history of literature. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com literature go to shopify.com literature that's shopify.com literature so good, so good, so good. Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now and they're up to 60% off. Stock up and save on Rag and Bone, Madewell, Vince, All Saints and more of your favorites. How did I not know Rack has Adidas? Why do we rack for the hottest deal? Just so many good brands. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you wreck. Score more with the college branded Venmo Debit card and earn up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash. Got paid back with the Venmo Debit card, you can instantly access your balance and spend on what you want like game day, snacks, gear, tickets and more. The more you do, the more cash back you can earn. Plus, there's no monthly fee or minimum balance. Sign up [e-mail] collegecard the Venmo Mastercard is issued by the Bancorp Bank NA Select Schools available Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply at venmo me stashterms Mac $100 cash back per month. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home with agents who close twice as many deals. When you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get [e-mail] own the dream protein is

[Matthew Zapruder]

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[Jack Wilson]

Okay? Joining me now is poet and professor Matthew Zapruder, author of four poetry collections and whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Tin House, and the Believer. He has written, written about, edited, taught, and won awards for poetry for many years. And his most recent book, why Poetry, argues that the way we have been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. Matthew Zapruder, welcome to the History of Literature podcast.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, so this is such a provocative book and yet it felt very necessary to me. I just kept thinking how somewhere along the way our society has developed this attitude about poetry. And as you point out, people often say, I don't understand poetry. And yet people still write it and read it, and they have opinions about it. And it didn't used to be this way. It seems like poetry used to be viewed as something more accessible and available to all people. So I hope we can unpack this today and figure out this disconnect. But I thought we might start with you. So when did you realize that you enjoyed reading poetry?

[Matthew Zapruder]

Well, that probably happened a little bit before I started writing it. So I tell the story in the book, but I had a couple of encounters with poetry when I was younger that were very powerful to me when I would read a poem, and it meant a lot to me. And then I immediately forgot them, those encounters. And then I was in my 20s, and I was studying for a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley. I'd studied Russian literature in college and lived in the Soviet Union for a year. And that was sort of my field. And I wanted to go back to school. Of course, I knew I needed to get some further education, and this was what I did. But I was sort of ambivalent about it. And then when I got there, I was studying a lot of poetry, Russian poetry. And so I kind of. That was my first sustained exposure to textual analysis and sort of the scholarly approach to poems. But I was also. I was kind of more interested in what these ideas about poems were bringing up in my mind. And at the same time, I was starting to write poetry a little bit. I got. I just. For some reason, I just decided I wanted to be a writer. That was what I really wanted to do. And I started writing. And what I started writing was poems. It was very surprising to me. And so when that happened, I sort of went out in search of the poetry that was happening then. And there was a kind of a cool scene in Berkeley. You know, there was this great bookstore called Cody's Books that had this amazing reading series. And people would come like, you know, like Gary Snyder and Bob Haas and Adrienne Rich. And I think Adrian Rich came back. But, I mean, people, you know, really, really, really famous, amazing poets would come and read for an audience of 30 or 40 or 50 people upstairs in this bookstore. And so I saw a lot of really cool readings and saw some stuff on campus. And so it was all kind of happening at the same time. Read, writing were linked for me, right?

[Jack Wilson]

So when you were reading the Russian poets, and then you made the decision to sit down and start writing. You didn't know that. You didn't sit down and say, I think I could be a poet. I think I could write a poem. You just sat down and started writing. And poetry caught you by surprise.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Yeah, I mean, it's a little hard to remember, but, I mean, what I remember doing very vividly is at a certain point, I had talked for a long time about being a writer, and I played music and bands, and I had sort of been around artists and writers in various ways. But I myself had not really done any writing, significant writing. And I thought what I really want most in this world is to be a writer. But. And, you know, I. Even being young and kind of stupid, I knew that one thing was true, that unless I actually wrote something, I wasn't going to be a writer. So I said, I guess I better try to write. And so I remember very vividly in my first year of graduate school, I would sit at my desk and just try to write. And what I wrote turned out to be poems. It was very surprising, I think. I don't know. I've never really been that interested in telling stories. I've never written stories or God knows, a novel. I read a lot. I'm very interested in fiction, but I just don't do that. It's not my thing. And I think maybe essays, a little bit I would write. But I was writing a lot of that kind of critical prose. So I don't think I was very drawn to that either. I mean, I think if I had I known, had I had a better sense of what an essay could be, maybe I would have been more drawn to that. But in my mind, that was more related to maybe journalism or the sort of scholarly writing I was doing. So I wasn't really very interested in that. Yeah, I really liked the poems that I was reading, these Russian poems, and they were very beautiful and mysterious. And I think I just started writing poems. And maybe in my mind it was also kind of linked with song lyrics. No, I think those are very different things. Somehow that there's something. But I think there's a deeper thing than that, to be honest. And it has to do with the whole point of the book. Why poetry? Which is whatever was going on in my superficial mind or my conscious mind. Deep inside me, I had this attraction to language and words. I always loved words. I loved learning foreign languages. I loved diagramming sentences. I loved wordplay. I loved the material of language. I loved just Words. I don't know why. That's just what I like. And I'm attracted to it. I think I have an instinct for it, and I think I just. When I started messing around with the blank page, what I was really interested in doing was kind of playing with material of language and seeing what further meaning could be made. I don't think I was as interested in, like, the mechanisms of storytelling or the mechanisms of character or world building or the mechanisms of, you know, following through an idea like you would an essay. I think I was interested in playing with words on the basic level. And I think that is what poets really are interested in, you know, that's where it begins.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. You tell a really vivid story in the book about when you encountered a poem by W.H. auden when you were. I guess you were still in high school.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Yeah, I was a senior in high school.

[Jack Wilson]

But it was clear the way the words resonated with you when you were reading that poem.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Yeah, I just kind of geeked out on the syntax of it. I think I talk about the first lines of the poem have this kind of cool, inverted syntax about suffering. The old masters, they were never wrong. And it's like. I think I just. I was like, wow, what is that? Why do I like that? And I think in the same way that if you're learning a foreign language, you can be kind of excited about. Oh, that's how. That's the order they say it in. Like, why do they say it that way as opposed to the way we say it? And what would that word, those, you know, just things like that are maybe of no interest to a person.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Or they. Very interesting. And to me, they were very interesting. And I can't really say why, but that's just, you know, part of me, I guess, about suffering. They were never wrong, the old Masters. How well they understood its human position. How it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along. How when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting for the miraculous birth, there always must be children who did not specially want it to happen. Skating on a pond at the edge of the wood, they never forgot that even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course anyhow. In a corner, some untidy spot where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturous horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree in Bruegel's Icarus, for instance, how everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster. The ploughman may have heard the splash, the Forsaken cry. But for him, it was not an important failure. The sun shone as it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water and the expensive, delicate ship that must have seen something amazing. A boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

[Jack Wilson]

It's interesting you use a foreign language example, because it does seem like poets and people who fall in love with poetry. A lot of times it's the musicality, or I guess it's like the Robert Frost quote, of hearing the sounds as if through a door. You can follow that and enjoy that, even if you're maybe not aware of what it would technically be called or what its form, what its poetic form actually is. But I can remember having the same reaction to that poem, actually. I think I read it in college, but it was about suffering. They were never wrong, the old masters. And you describe it as a delayed entrance of these old masters. And I didn't know who the old masters were. I didn't know they were painters. I sort of was learning about that kind of thing, but it still drew me right into the poem, and it made me sort of picture them. And then I kind of remembered I had this cigar box when I was a kid, and it had Dutch masters on it and had these pictures of these guys. And I sort of. I put those two together, you know, and I kind of could imagine these. These. These wise figures who just sat around and pontificated on things and it all.

[Matthew Zapruder]

I think it's almost better. I think it's almost better if you don't know that he's talking about painters.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right.

[Matthew Zapruder]

And I think in a way, he. Even though literally, of course, he means the paint. That's like old masters. That's a term, as we know, for the painters. But I think he means it in a more general sense also. And that's why the. Just about painters. It's about authority.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Matthew Zapruder]

It's about an old structure of knowledge that is disintegrating or troubled or something. And, you know, and that. That's what a lot of modernist work is about. And I mean, that's why I call Auden a modernist, you know, even if his work itself isn't necessarily, you know, formally, you know, as radical as some of. Some of his contemporaries. But, I mean. Yeah, that modernist sensibility, I guess.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Matthew Zapruder]

You know, you don't know that stuff when you first read it. You're just responding to the way the poem is working for you as a reader. And I mean, I think now that we're Talking about it. You know, so much emphasis is put in reading poetry on what you need to know and. And that background and context and all that kind of stuff. And all that stuff is important. And I mean, I mentioned Harold Bloom in the introduction and kind of tweak him a little bit because I think he so emphasizes that idea that you have to have all this knowledge. But I think actually the opposite is true in a way. It's like the lack of context, the lack of knowledge might add to the reading experience in that. Because you take those words, Old Masters, you did, and I did. So, like, on their own terms, they don't refer some other thing. They mean something more primal and basic to us. And then, of course, when you know the other context, you can have that experience, too. It's not mutually exclusive. You can add to the feeling.

[Jack Wilson]

And it seems like Auden knew that he could have said about suffering. They were never wrong. Bruegel and his peers, you know, great

[Matthew Zapruder]

painters or something, or. Yeah, absolutely.

[Jack Wilson]

He chose those words because they would have. That. They would bring that along with them.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Yeah. I think that's what I mean by symbolism. When I talk later in the book about symbolism, that's what I mean by symbolism. I mean the kind of way that words can become abstract, both specific and also abstracted into this kind of larger sense, you know, so Old Masters, it's a kind of symbol. It's. It's. It's. It has a literal meaning, but it's also like it expands, like, outside of its context into some greater. Greater possibility, greater potentiality. Meaning that can be filled in with emotional response.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Matthew Zapruder]

And that's what happens with those. With those words. And so it's. It's. It's. And I think it's interesting that you tell its story because it's. It's. You know, you and I had a very similar experience with a lot of people have.

[Jack Wilson]

Now, are you. Is when you're saying that the way we've been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. Are we kind of getting at that here with the allusions, or. I'm imagining a student who comes to this poem and starts reading it and enjoying it, and then a teacher informs the student, well, actually, you don't know anything about Bruegel or the Old Masters. And so you can't really understand the poem and the student thinking, well, I thought I got something out of it, but I guess maybe I didn't. Is that kind of, in a nutshell, what we're talking about? Here that.

[Matthew Zapruder]

I think that's part of it. Yeah, that's part of. Part of it. I think also that. So that idea that the only way you could really appreciate or understand a poem is if you have all this contextual knowledge and you know, what every reference is referring to and all the whatever, like mythologies and histories and all that kind of stuff that is. That are behind things that happen in poems that you. That you. Those things aren't just like. They don't just deepen your experience, they're essential to your experience of the poem. Like that. That's one thing, I think that is. That's a problem also, you know, on a more just basic level, I think that we're taught that the words in poems are not. That they don't mean what they seem to mean. And that's just a very common experience, I think, when people are taught poetry. And it's really something I've come across over and over again as a teacher and just as talking to people about poetry, that they're just told that these. The language of poetry is inherently coded.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Matthew Zapruder]

And it just is not. That's like factually incorrect. Which is not true for the most part for poetry.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Matthew Zapruder]

It's occasionally true, but it's mostly not true. But people think it's true. And so they're reading the poem and they're just filled with this doubt about whether the actual words on the page mean what they understand them usually to mean. And if you. And that right there is going to short circuit any experience you have.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Matthew Zapruder]

So you can't leave your eyes, basically. And then you immediately are just looking for some other coded explanation for what's going on.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And then I've always seemed to have this experience, too. And then you sort of. Sometimes you can look in vain to find where the poet actually says anything about this or even suggests that that's what they had in mind. And then you realize that what you're thinking about is the critic and the act of criticism and the. The creativity of the critic in imposing this meaning on the words on the page. And you kind of feel like, well, I was kind of hoping to read this poem by this poet, and instead I'm getting this filtered through whatever's been layered on top of it.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Right. I mean, so we've talked about two problems now. I mean, one problem is this problem of, like, you know, how much preparation or context you need to read a poem and whether that's like. Again, as I said before, that can be additive and deepening. But to say that it's required or before you even encounter the poem, I think is just not correct. And the second thing now we're talking about is this sort of idea of that the language of poems is inherently coded. I think most critics of any sophistication would not talk about poems that way. But I think, unfortunately, there's a lot of, you know, on the sort of secondary school level or even earlier or whatever, there's a lot of that kind of teaching that goes on. Mainly because I think that just people, you know, they don't know how to teach poetry. They're not prepared for it. It's not their specialty. And so they fall back on that as like a kind of way of teaching, and it sort of gets perpetrated. And so part of what I'm trying to do now is I'm starting to talk to more high school teachers and. And meet with them and visit classes and stuff and see how poetry is actually taught and what's going on in there and whether there can't be some ways of approaching it differently that open things up a little bit more. And I have a lot of ideas about that, but I want to do that in collaboration with that people who are actually in the classroom and have those pressures on them. I mean, I think the third thing that we haven't mentioned yet is this sort of idea that every poem has to have a big message or some kind of significance or some kind of, like, significance with a capital S, maybe all the letters capitalized significance, that it's some big message and that you're supposed to take away some big idea. And I try to, in the book, to really focus much more on the experience of reading the poem and what it does to your mind and what it does to your thinking and how you move through the poem, as opposed to just treating it like a kind of content or message delivery system. So those three things are really. They're pretty powerful interference with reading poems. And so I try in the book to remove them as much as possible and then move into some different ways of talking about poems. It's sort of a third or half the way through the book. I try to shift into more like, this is what I think you should be doing instead of succumbing to those kinds of ideas about it.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. So I started this podcast, and it's been kind of this running theme of is literature dying? And is literature on the wane? And, you know, people ask me this all the time, like, what, what do you think? Do you think we'll still read books and do you think we'll still read literature? And 50 years from now, will literature even still be around? And, you know, everyone points to the era when Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer were on Johnny Carson at night and the cultural relevance of novels and sort of says, you know, it's. It's fading away. The Internet's taking everyone's attention. We connect with people in different ways now. And all of this. And when I ask authors, the main thing that they have pointed out is they'll say, well, it's not going to disappear because we tell stories. Human beings tell stories. We're or a storytelling creature. And as long as we're human, we will have this need for stories and that literature in some form or another will survive. But your book had a paragraph that kind of blew me away because it reminded me that poetry maybe has something different going on than fiction. And I'm going to read the paragraph, if you don't mind. The power of the activated material of language and poetry can only fully be pursued when the writer is not ultimately preoccupied with any other task like storytelling or explaining or convincing or describing or anything else in their poems. Poets do those things, but only as long as it suits them. A poet is always ready to let them go. Every true poem is marked somewhere by that freedom and that choice. To be ready to reject all other purposes in favor of the possibilities of language freed from utility is when the writer becomes a poet. You talked about this earlier when you said you sat down, you didn't really have an interest in telling stories, but you wanted to be a writer and had an interest in writing. It's kind of simple to say poetry is about language and novels is about storytelling. But I'm interested in this poetic state of mind or this space that you need to be in. And what exactly what is it that poets are trying to do? And how would you describe what a poet is doing if they're not convincing or describing or storytelling or explaining?

[Matthew Zapruder]

Well, the poets do do those things. Of course they do. They must. I mean, it's part of the structure. I mean, the poem isn't just a bunch of words thrown on the page. It has a kind of. But I think what I was trying to say in that paragraph, and I mean, I've gotten a fair amount of pushback.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, really?

[Matthew Zapruder]

About that idea? Yeah. Well, because I think that people right now are so into this idea of literature as a kind of, like, instrument of change. You know, how is literature going to help fix the incredible problems we face? I understand that and it's not. And that even makes it sound too intellectual. I think there's just people who feel. So many people who feel so deeply that they cannot imagine extricating any significant activity they do from their commitment to social justice and social change. And that makes sense to me. I understand that. I think the danger is that poetry will turn into prose.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Matthew Zapruder]

That's not as big a danger as global warming or racial violence. You know, my point is simply that, like, really what poems are about, in my opinion, is about freedom and play.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Matthew Zapruder]

They are anarchic. You know, they don't respect good behavior or being told what to do or anything. And I think there's a kind of spirit of disruption and play and interest and almost like. I don't want to say nihilism. That's not really the right word, but almost like kind of amorality in a way. Like in the interest in the material of language itself. It's like the way that a painter just likes paint. Painters, you know, painters get to just, like, paint. They get to just, like, paint. They're allowed to do that. You know, like musicians get to just, like music. They get to pick up their instrument and play it and just play the music and like the way it sounds and be into it.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Like, I kind of feel like poets. It's very important that poets permit themselves that relationship to words. Or if they don't, then they won't write poems that are meaningful as poems, as opposed to just sort of like, you know, lyricized prose.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. So maybe poets shouldn't be asked to justify and explain all the words they choose. When the reasons for explaining the words or the reasons for selecting the words or putting them in that particular order might be something inexplicable.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Yeah. But on the other hand, I mean, you're not going to read a poem that you feel like doesn't. I mean, nobody's really going to care about a poem that doesn't strike some deeper chord in them. If I can use a kind of cheesy metaphor or whatever, I'm talking about process. I'm not talking about outcome. What we've been talking about is what it feels like to make poems and the space that you need to put yourself in. I feel like, to make poems in some way. Because if you're sitting there thinking to yourself, oh, I have to make a poem that follows all the rules or says what it's supposed to say or whatever, I feel like you won't. That's the space. More of prose writing, I guess.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, right.

[Matthew Zapruder]

But paradoxically, I think when you allow yourself that kind of freedom. And I write about this in this chapter, Political Poetry, you know, which is kind of. In the middle of the book, there's a chapter where I write about Mary Baraka and W.S. merwin and Audre Lorde. And, you know, I'm trying to show that, like, by giving yourself up to that attention to the material of language, you find your way to a moral place, or you can't find your way to a more amoral place, not a moral amoral place or an ethical place. And that. That is, you know, it's a kind of something you can't necessarily control. It's something you discover, but it's. I've seen it time and time again in other people's poems and in my own poems. So I'm not saying that, like, poems should just be, like, this decorative pile of language that has no significance. I'm talking about process more than I am end product.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Matthew Zapruder]

If that makes sense. I don't know if I'm making sense or not, but I'm just, like, trying to. There's a lot of moving parts in this conversation. And so. And part of the part that you quoted is I'm talking about. I'm pretty sure that that part is in earlier in the book when I'm talking about my own. The time that I sort of started to realize that I was a poet. So I'm talking more from my own experience of, like, hey, this is what I started to do with language. It was different from what I was doing with language in other spaces in my life or whatever. And that. That is somehow related to poems, but it's not necessarily about, like, what the poem would feel like to a reader.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Although I understand that the importance of freedom for the poet to feel as if they have that kind of freedom. But you have another quote that I loved, which was Paul Valerie. And it was. A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state of mind by means of words. And I kind of felt like. I mean, going back to the Auden poem that we were talking about, I kind of felt like I was encouraged by Auden to read it with a sort of poetic state of mind, if that makes sense. You know, that it was so. It almost seems like there's this process where the poet is free to be liberated from, I guess, duties, or. I think you quote Wittgenstein as saying, it's the language game of giving information, and then it goes into the words, and then readers who are sensitive to the possibilities of language and who come to it with sort of an open mind, can kind of get a glimpse into the emotion or the ideas that the poet was putting into the poem.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Yeah. Well, okay, so there's two things there. The part that you just said. I would just say if a poem is really working for a reader, they sort of get caught up in the gears of it almost. And that's like, really what the. For some reason, I thought of that. Great. Is it modern times that Charlie Chaplin gets caught up in a big machine?

[Jack Wilson]

That's me reading the Wasteland.

[Matthew Zapruder]

That's how I feel when I read poems. You know, it's like. And it's a process. It's a feeling that you get from reading the poem. And it happens over the course of reading the poem. It's not like you're not standing outside it, looking into it, sort of admiring it or being like, well, that's fascinating or whatever. I mean, it's more like you get sucked into it, I think, almost. And that's what that Valerie quote about the poem being. That Valerie quote has, like, a kind of quality of circularity to it. It's like almost circular reasoning. But it's like it's just basically saying the poem's a machine that makes you feel like you're experiencing poetry. And it's like this tautology. That's very true feeling, I think. And so there's that part of it that's from the point of view, like, again, more of a reader. And that's what it feels to me, like when I read a poem that I'm really connecting with. And what was it you mentioned? You mentioned something else besides the Valerie quote. I can't remember. Oh, you mentioned the Wittgenstein, which is so interesting because. God, that quote is so fascinating because he just basically calls. He says that giving information. He calls it a language game. And in doing so, he just sort of identifies this whole thing we take for granted that language does as children. One of the things that language can do.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Poems do a different thing.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Matthew Zapruder]

They're playing a different language game. It's so. I remember reading that and thinking, wow, that is exactly right. In the same way that, you know, again, just to use an analogy, I mean, if you're talking about paint, I mean, sometimes painters are painting houses, and sometimes they're painting canvases, you know, And I know that house paint and paint, oil paint, aren't the same thing, but they can be. Actually, people paint canvases with house paint. Sometimes you're using it for one thing, and sometimes you're using it for another. And the same thing is true for language. Sometimes you're using it for one thing and sometimes you're using it for another. And my job in this book was to try to talk about the other thing you can use language for.

[Jack Wilson]

And you give some beautiful examples. The one I wasn't familiar with was from Brenda Hillman, and it described the daffodils as lamps of pity.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Yeah, that's a kind of thing you can only say if you're feeling pretty free with language, I think.

[Jack Wilson]

And even though, you know, I would never have thought that, I don't think you'd find that in a dictionary definition. It felt so true and so much truer than any, you know, description of the flowers. It fit the mood of the poem perfectly. And it's just a beautiful little.

[Matthew Zapruder]

This is kind of what they look like. I mean, when you go look at them. I mean, I'm not a big. I'm one of those people who always forgets, like, which flowers which. And like what they look like and everything, for the most part. But I went. Remember reading that and then looking at a picture of a daffodil and thinking, oh, that is what they look like. They do look like that. So there's a kind of accuracy also that's important. But I think that accuracy can only be found instinctively. I think I said, when I'm talking about those poems by Brenda, I said, I think in a different part, I mentioned the use of her word corridor. I posit. I haven't asked her. I don't know if this is true, but that choice of that word was instinctive for her. But that the reason why it makes sense in the poem or was kept in the poem or survives in the poem, whatever word you want to use for it is because it resonates into the poem. She could have said something else that would not have resonated into the poem. And then she probably would have been unsatisfied with it as a poet and looked for a different word. And who knows, maybe that was the eighth word she chose, or maybe it was the first. I don't know. But it's kind of. A lot of it's trial and error as a poet. A lot of it's instinct. A lot of it's just messing around. And I talk sometimes with my students about this. There's a term in literature called the intentional fallacy, but I use it in a different. I think the way that I'm saying it isn't what it usually means, which is just the intentional fallacy. What I mean by that is that when the poem is done, it seems so inevitable. And it seems like every choice was made consciously and it seems that everything was planned out, but in fact it's not true. I have never met a poet who doesn't cross things out and make wrong turns and fix things and change things around or whatever. And then in the end, it just seems like it all was meant to be, but it wasn't. I mean, I guess maybe life is like, right?

[Jack Wilson]

Or someone could point something out to you as a poet and it maybe was something you hadn't even noticed about.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Your poem happens all the time. It's very mortifying.

[Jack Wilson]

It must be satisfying, though. There must be times when you have a line or, you know that, you know, you chose the word corridor or you chose the old masters and you know that it's just the perfect fit and you're going to. You must feel like, well, that's not one I'm going to look at later and try to cross out. I know I found the perfect word for this.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Yeah, it happens all the time. And I'm sure it happens to lots of poets. And very often those choices, if someone comes back to you later and talks to you about them, they'll have all kinds of ideas and reasons why you chose them that you would have never thought of yourself. But that's the whole point, is that poets are. The talent that poets have is that they just remember in some deep, atavistic part of themselves, like the meanings of those words and their provenances and their connections. And they have this instinctive. I mean, I have an almost mystical belief in this. I mean, it may be plain old mystical belief in this that, you know, language is. I mean, language is the collective knowledge of our species. This isn't my idea. I mean, this is an idea that, you know, Vico, Giambattisto, Vito Vico and many others have talked about. But like this. It's. Language is our collective knowledge. And on a practical sense, it's just true because every single word that we use means what it means because all kinds of people before us decided it meant that and not something else, right? So when we use the word, we really are literally resting on or benefiting from or whatever you want to say, like the kind of collective decision making of people who use the language. So it's a very powerful historical, cultural, historical, material language. We're not aware of those things consciously for the most part, but we know that and we Know it.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Somewhere. And poets are just people who know it have a. More. Have a deeper sense of those things, I think. And it just cracks me up when I was. You know, people say, like. You know, they think that what makes somebody poet is that they have. Like, they're more sensitive than other people. Emotional. It's like. It's like. No, I mean, most of the poets I know are monsters. You know, they're completely. Like. They're completely jerks. And they're not more emotional or sensitive or whatever than other people. I mean, and it's that they. It's this. It has to do with their relationship to language.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. So it's not just that a cloudy day will make you feel more despondent than other people. It's that.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Well, that's an idea that comes from Wordsworth, you know, in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, when he says that, you know, basically like that. That's. That a poem is, you know, an emotion recollected, an emotional experience basically recollected in tranquility. I think that's what he says. And so there's that. I think that's. That idea comes from the Romantics that, like, the poets walk around like they're these vibrating antennas of sensitivity or whatever, and then they sort of. But that's just kind of. Why is that more true for poets and for prose writers? Like, as the prose writers I know. I mean, I would say that the prose writers I know are usually more interested in human. You know, the mechanics of human interaction and their, like, character and destiny and, like, you know, landscape and sociological matters. That's been my experience. I mean, like. Because they're. Because that's what they really write about. But poets are really obsessive about language.

[Jack Wilson]

Would you say that poets are like, the caretakers of language as well? Do you feel that as an obligation that you need to get words right and to encourage your students to get words right?

[Matthew Zapruder]

I don't feel that as, like, an ethical obligation, although I suppose there's a. You know, maybe that is a good, like, side effect, but I think it's just sort of more required for making interesting and worthwhile poems. I'm more like. That's sort of the. I mean, I think that as a society and as a. Whatever, as a species, we have a big problem with that and that if we were more accurate with our language and more attentive to what we were saying and less susceptible to just lies, you know, we would be. Yeah, we'd be a lot better off, for sure. So in that sense, like, I think maybe there's a good side effect. I mean, that's sort of like this sort of argument for studying or reading poetry that's sort of more like kind of, I don't know, social or societal. It's like, well, we have to be better close readers. We have to be better readers of situation. And there's nothing. There's nothing quite like the sort of small area of a poetic text to focus one's attention and focus. And, you know, I love being in a. Being in a classroom with some students and just really honing in on, like, a short poem and really digging into it. I think there's no better tool for teaching close reading. So that alone, you know, just as like a teacher of. You know, I'm talking about being like a kind of like a teacher of undergraduates or, you know, whatever. Just sort of like a humanities teacher. Like, I think that that's a pretty. Pretty great thing, but that doesn't have that much to do with, like, writing good poems. Maybe has something to do with it, but it's not like, really the main deal.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Okay, we're wrapping up here, but I have a surprise bonus question for you.

[Matthew Zapruder]

All right, I'm ready.

[Jack Wilson]

You ready? Okay.

[Matthew Zapruder]

It's not a math question. I'm going to have to call an outside authority.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, that's interesting. We didn't really talk about that, but that was one of the things that I felt like you would be a good person to advocate against is the formalities of meter, where you're sitting and counting up syllables. And sometimes poetry writing, I think, can be thought of as very mechanical and that you have to fit things into boxes and that kind of thing. But I'm glad to hear that.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Well, that's sort of fun puzzle making. And I love great formal poetry. I adore it. I mean, absolutely. I'm not. Personally, I can do it, but it's not like. It's not. I don't. It's not really what I'm really good at. I just. I'm more of a free verse person personally, but I don't have a. Like, an axe to grind in that argument, really.

[Jack Wilson]

You talk about doing a sort of apprenticeship where you worked your way through all the forms. I think you were getting it out of the back of a book or something.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Yeah, that was during that time. We were talking about this earlier, like, that time period when I was first starting to write poetry. When I was a Cal. I bought the Norton Anthology of Poetry at the aforementioned Erstwhile Cody's and I.

[Jack Wilson]

So you wrote a villanelle and a. Yeah.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Like, in the back. Yeah. And everything. All the different kinds of sonnets and, you know, Heroic Couplets and Alexander, like, you know, everything they list and then they have like, a little. I mean, I don't know if I haven't looked at it in a while, but they have, like, little page numbers that are like, you know, villanelle. And then they give you, like, a page. You go look at it and you can see the pattern or whatever and then try your own or something. Yeah, so I did that for about a year, that first year I was writing poetry. And it was, you know, I didn't write anything good, but it was. It was. It was. It was cool. It was a cool thing to do.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, you were learning. You're learning your craft and learning your art.

[Matthew Zapruder]

I was at the very, very, very beginning of that process of learning it. But it turned out that it was a good way to start. Yeah, for sure.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And now you say, I secretly think my poems do rhyme, which is great. So maybe explain that for the listeners.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Yeah, I mean, I talk about. But what I mean is that they rhyme conceptually. They're ideas. Rhyme, to me, is a larger idea of just like. Of the chiming of concepts that you wouldn't ordinarily put together. I mean, that's the pleasure of rhyme, is you, like. You find a sonic correspondence that also has a kind of conceptual correspondence. Only have the sonic correspondence. You end up with, like, very silly rhymes that don't do anything, you know, but like. But a great rhyme has that, like, kind of. The words sound the same and they kind of link in meaning somehow. Yeah, but this. So that. So my. What I'm talking about there in that chapter, which is, again, a lot about first starting to write poetry, is that I realized that that sonic rhyme, that literal rhyme, what we call rhyming, you know, moon in June or something, is just to kind of see subset of a larger way that language kind of echoes with itself and creates new meanings and finds new correspondences. And that. That's kind of inherent to the poetic enterprise.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, that's a great part of the book. And there's so many. So many good passages in the book. What you've described today has been so rich with information. There may be people who think they've heard, why do I need to read the book now? But I would encourage all the readers to all my listeners to run out and buy it because there is so much there. But let me get to the surprise bonus question.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Ready?

[Jack Wilson]

Okay. After falling asleep with a beloved volume of poetry on your chest, you awake from unsettling dreams to find yourself on a panel with several others like yourself. A host informs you that your job is to advocate for poetry as a glorious expression of what humanity is capable of. A woman is on the panel whose specialty is classical music, and she names Beethoven's Third Symphony as the work that best represents the triumph of the human spirit. In her field, a film advocate named Citizen Kane. The painter next to you chooses Picasso's Guernica. And now it's your turn. What poem do you choose, and why?

[Matthew Zapruder]

Ode to a Nightingale by Keats. I think it's just. I mean, it's just. It has everything in. Sounds fantastic. It's very, you know, moving. It has. It's about a central kind of human dilemma, mortality. Obviously. It summons up and continually troubles itself with the interaction between human beings in the natural world. It's honest. I think it's pretty direct. I mean, it's written in, you know, like. It's got. Its language is a little bit fancy, but it's not. It's very easy to understand. I mean, if you just sort of. Just slow down a bit.

[Jack Wilson]

Yep.

[Matthew Zapruder]

And I just think it's. You know, I just think it's a perfect poem.

[Jack Wilson]

That's a beautiful pick. Not bad for someone. Not bad for someone who was 24.

[Matthew Zapruder]

No, not bad for someone who's 24. I mean, it's. It's. I don't know that you're. We're ever gonna have. We're ever gonna find another person who was so gifted. I mean, I think that just in terms of poetry, I just. He had the gift. He had everything, you know, and he. And he made the most of his time on Earth, that's for sure.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Matthew Zapruder]

I guess on his gravestone it says, here lies one whose name was writ in water. I think that's in his very last letter he wrote. It signs off by saying, I always made an awkward bow. I think that's his last. That's the way it signed his last. Everything he said was amazing. You know, it's like. It's just right of Keats. He's one of my big favorites.

[Jack Wilson]

I may have to do a show on Keats. I don't think we should. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matthew Zapruder]

You can bring me back for a cameo if you want.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay. Yeah, we'll do it. Okay. Well, Matthew Zapruder, thank you so much for joining me. The book is why Poetry? And as I said, I think Everyone, all my listeners I think would enjoy it. It is a beautiful book and it really is. I found it very inspiring and it made me want to run out and get some Wallace Stevens and some Marianne Moore and now I've got John Keats to put back on my shelf. And if your goal was to try to inspire at least one reader to read more poetry, your mission has been accomplished.

[Matthew Zapruder]

Wow, that really makes me happy to hear that. Thank you so much and thanks for all the great questions and conversations.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, there we go. Wasn't that great? So smart and so interesting. You can get Matthew's book why Poetry? At Amazon or wherever you buy your books. Trust me when I say it is worth the read. Another one of those books that lovers of literature will all enjoy. And I didn't get the chance to talk about this, but there's a personal side to the book too. It's full of poetry arguments and theories, but it's also full of Matthew's journey. It's full of poetry and full of heart. Okay, that's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. Mike Palindrome and Kafka are just around the corner. So subscribe today if you haven't already. And I'm trying to reanimate the old Twitter account at a new handle, TheJackWilson. So stop by and say hello if you get the chance. It will inspire me to do more and to do better. Maybe you can tell me your favorite poem. Would you have chosen Ode to a Nightingale or something else? Let me know at TheJack Wilson. That's TheJack Wilson. And Jack is spelled with an e. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

[Matthew Zapruder]

The comedy movie event of the year, Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice. Now streaming only on Hulu and Disney plus.

[Jack Wilson]

Time to party.

[Matthew Zapruder]

That's a great attitude. It's a time traveling ass kicking movie event. You sound insane. Starring Vince Vaughn, James Marsden and Asa Gonzalez. I thought you were a clown.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, clones aren't real, dummy.

[Matthew Zapruder]

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