Story of a Poem: A Memoir

by Matthew Zapruder

" Story of a Poem  is the luminous, lyrical meditation on wringing beauty from suffering and air, threaded with a singular, moving story about parenting an atypical child. I read it in a single gulp, and you will too.” —Mary Karr, Bestselling author of  The Liars' Club  and  Cherry Matthew Zapruder had an to write a poem as slowly and intentionally as possible, to preserve its drafts, and record the painstaking, elusively transcendent stuff of its construction. It would be the end cap to a new collection of poetry, and a means to process modern American life in a time of political turmoil, mega fires, and sobriety. What Zapruder didn’t anticipate was that this literary project would reveal a deeply personal aspect as a way to resolve the unexplored pain and unexpected joys he was confronting in the wake of his son’s diagnosis with autism. The result is a remarkable piece of writing, one that explores not just what it means to be a poet and father, but also what it means to be alive on this planet during this turbulent and extraordinary time.  By comparing the writing of a poem with his own tangled evolution as a son, husband and father, Zapruder unfolds moments of his own life in the reflection of an increasingly uncanny world. With a wide range of reference points— from Celan, Li Bai and Frank O’Hara to Whitman, Merwin and Rupi Kaur—we join Zapruder on a poet’s journey; that in some alchemy of literature, becomes a journey of our own. Ultimately, the poet asks us to join with him in the search for a crucial answer. In his “What world can we imagine, and then make, where we all can live?”  With  Story of a Poem  celebrated poet Matthew Zapruder offers a personal, deeply unguarded examination of a poet’s eternal struggle to transform a moment of feeling into verse, as well as a subtle and enthralling roadmap to the practice of poetry and finding its threads in everyday life.

Genres: Poetry, Memoir, Nonfiction, Writing

207 pages, Hardcover

First published April 4, 2023

About the author

Matthew Zapruder is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Father’s Day, as well as Why Poetry, and Story of a Poem. In 2000, he co-founded Verse Press, and is now editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. From 2016-7 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine, and he was the Editor of Best American Poetry 2022. He lives in Northern California, and teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California. His forthcoming collection of poetry, I Love Hearing Your Dreams, will be published by Scribner in September, 2024.

Reviews

[Derek Bosshard]

A strange twist of a memoir that fuses musings on parenthood with poetry; kind of a sweet spot for me. The undercurrent here is the idea that poetry works best as a process of unfolding— embracing what feels like uncertainty in the moment, resisting clarity but creating connections (which, when it’s done honestly, makes for a wonderful mode of communication, with the self and with others).

[Elizabeth Rynecki · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is very much the story of a poem - how it came to be written, what experiences compelled Zapruder to write and share his poetry. The first half of the book is the part I love the most - he’s so lyrically honest about how his poetic instincts helped him navigate his son’s diagnosis with autism. It’s in those vulnerable moments on the page that I felt most connected to this interwoven literary journey of life, language, and parenting.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had assumed this would be something like Ron Carlson Writes a Story or Daniel Hahn's Catching Fire: A Translation Diary and explore the process of writing a story or a poem as those writers did. But Carlson's and Hahn's books were quite literal and linear (I did this and then I did that), while Zapruder's book - because he's a poet! - is exploratory, meandering, personal, a meditation on what it means to write poetry, as well as showing the evolution of one long poem. A memoir of a son/husband/father/teacher/poet.  

[Joe Imwalle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. Not sure why i’m not giving 5 stars. The star thing is bothersome. I really appreciate Matthew’s willingness to be vulnerable and share his rough drafts and doubts and process with writing and parenting and self-improvement.

[Lily Poppen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite like his prose but am not as fond of the poetry. Full of vulnerability though and publishing drafts really gave some interesting insight to his shifting emotions as a parent.

[Ebba Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've really not spent much time reading any poetry, but for some reason I picked up this book anyway. It was beautiful writing and I found it very enjoyable to read. I found his process for writing poetry to be so interesting to read about. Although I won't claim to have understood every line of his poems (or of any of the poems referenced throughout this book). I will say though, that his thoughts and writings around his autistic son wear, without a doubt, the best part of this book for me. I deeply appreciated they way he works through the complicated emotions and thoughts that he has as a father and the amazingly beautiful way he speaks of his son. It was so - I can't stop saying "beautiful" but really, it was beautiful and so touching to read. I appreciated how raw and real his thoughts were. A few times throughout the book, Zapruder shares the grief of losing his father. He does an excellent job of putting words to many emotions that I have experienced myself.

In all, this book was certainly out of my normal wheelhouse, but I greatly appreciated the work that was put into it. You'll note that my highlights are mainly surrounding Zapruder's comments on his son and autism, with one or two highlights regarding grief.

Highlights included below:
which is, it turns out, completely wrong, along with almost everything else I thought I knew.

When writing or talking about him I feel like I am constantly in danger of narrowing him as a person through how I write, overly defining him.

I am so conditioned to think of intelligence as equivalent to facility with language and conceptual thinking: the ability to organize and synthesize ideas and return them to the world in an attractive package, the quicker the better. But what if this is not the most important thing? Every time I turn on my computer and connect to the swirl of online conversation, I am confronted with endless variations of this, manifested as content. Is it helping? Or is it just the endless churn of blathering language that does nothing to solve any of our problems, to truly educate anyone or help anyone think in new and creative ways?

The pushing away of that word is not a denial, but the creating of a space so I and everyone else can truly encounter my son, just as we should encounter everyone.

And our job is to change not him, but the world.

Even though a poem is in a certain way unidirectional speech, it can be a singular place to ask real questions, to clarify them and be in them with the reader. Maybe this is a better way forward than preaching to the converted or yelling at those who will never listen.

“Attention,” wrote Simone Weil, “is the purest form of generosity.”

from the moment he was born, I fell in love with my son, and continued to love him more and more as he became who he is, despite my narrow desires and expectations.

What would happen if I imagined everything I think is different, “bad,” a mistake, all of it is the essential prerequisite for something truly interesting and different?

The story I thought was in – which, to be honest, was bringing me very little happiness, and a lot of shame over the inequities upon which it depends – changed, and keeps changing. I’ve been given this great, unexpected, difficult gift. My challenge is to take everything I have learned, and live up to my story, and my love for my son. Whenever I do, I feel an unfamiliar peace. I still have so much work to do, so much to forget.

I couldn’t talk about what I was feeling, because it seemed simultaneously too huge and utterly banal. Everyone either has a dead father, or will.

my continuing sorrow was not only not unique, but the most common thing in the world.

[David Curry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew Zapruder’s unwieldy STORY OF A POEM chronicles a period during which he (1) went through various drafts of a new poem and (2) dealt with the experience of having his young son diagnosed as autistic. The organization of the material is occasionally haphazard, and for this reader Zapruder’s commentary on his poetry sometimes borders on preciosity, but the father/son story that too often gets submerged in other concerns is deeply moving.

Writing of his son’s experience in learning language: “”Attention,’ wrote Simone Weil ‘is the purest form of generosity.’ Shared attention is the purest form of communication, and shared perseverance through difficulty is what ‘pierces the loneliness.’ When my son is making meaning word by word, it’s sublime. He looks at me, and I wait as he searches. Sometimes if he needs help, I give him a choice of two things I think he might mean, and he either picks one or continues searching. Everything means something and is there for a reason. Around him, no one takes a single word for anything less than the treasure it is.”

Understanding the complex nature of communication, at one point Zapruder speaks of a poem, long in the process of writing and rewriting, finally becoming “strange enough to cross over.”

On the importance for a writer to get something — anything — down on paper, Zapruder quotes Robert Hass: “You can’t revise nothing.”

Zapruider’s candidacy as a voice for our times comes clear in this: “I feel so utterly oppressed by the virulence of everyone’s certainty, especially my own. I forget how to ask a question. To ask a question, so impossible, changes one’s orientation toward the world. And to write a poem is to ask a question. The question only gradually comes into being as the poem moves from chaos top necessity. I depend on my own fragile discipline to refrain from looking at social media, which constantly dismays me, especially in how it manages to convert everything, even questions, into assertions.”

The book is at its best in deeply affecting moments between father and son: “Recently he figured out how to draw in perspective, how I have no idea, since I am not capable of teaching him. And all the while the house will be filled with singing. He has perfect pitch and remembers every melody he hears, even only once, forever.”

[Featherbooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ideal book for me, Matthew Zapruder writes lyrically and thoughtfully about how a poem unfolds for him through various drafts and picks up bits of his reading along the way to add to his ideas, changing his poem with each draft. Part memoir, he talks about his pitch-perfect son's diagnosis of autism, his sobriety, his father's death, his reading, his visits to poets (W S Merwin), to the Isamu Noguchi Museum, about Basho, Li BaiLi Bai, and even Rupi Kaur, Paul Celan, Wallace Stevens, Federico García Lorca, Vicente Aleixandre, Mary Ruefle, Richard Hugo,and many more poets. Relatable and compelling, I read it late into the night and each morning I looked up poems.

"Dear Reader, I am trying to pry open your casket/ with this burning snowflake." James Tate

[Robert B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poet Matthew Zapruder’s memoir is ostensibly about the evolution of a single poem and follows its development from inception to final form. But the book is also about the evolution of the poet himself – his self-perception, his understanding of language, and his role as a father to an autistic child. At his best, Zapruder shows us that poetry, like parenting and self-discovery, is "an endless, shifting negotiation between intention and discovery ..." The details of his creative process are often fascinating – for example, his observation that "One sign that a draft is struggling is when it bounces around among various pronouns." Zapruder’s relationship with his son often challenges the fundamental ways the poet makes sense of the world: "I understand ... the experience of my son, by thinking of the difficulty I have in making poems ..." A bit too exploratory and meandering perhaps but generally very good.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this gem thanks to artist Austin Kleon’s newsletter, which I highly recommend, by the way, for anyone interested in art-making and creativity.

I’m passing along Kleon’s summary in case it hooks your interest as much as it did mine:

“‘Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.’ That’s the great James Tate, quoted at the beginning of Matthew Zapruder’s memoir, Story of A Poem. Zapruder shares the ongoing drafts of a poem he’s working on — very #showyourwork — while also meditating on his experiences with writing poetry and being the father of an autistic son. Could a book be more up my alley? The way he unpacks his feelings about giftedness, overachieving, language, disability, and difference really spoke to me.”

The book lives up to this description and resonated powerfully for me as a writer with a neurodivergent child.

[Ashly Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book both way too precious and also deeply moving and compelling. I wanted it to end, but also didn’t want it to be over. I think this makes sense for a book about the process of writing, written while you’re working on the writing.

I love how grandiose this book gets while exploring the making of a poem. It is actually quite interesting to see what things Zapruder internalized into his writing and how his world shaped his work.

I think anyone who is or has been part of the writing/poetry world in some way would get a lot out of this book. Anyone else, maybe not so much.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5 stars

”’Poetry makes nothing happen,’ W. H. Auden wrote, which doesn’t mean it does nothing. It makes nothing happen. It activates the silence. You begin, and now there is something to listen to.”

A very touching book about poetry and parenthood. It was fascinating to watch the development of the titular poem. This definitely gave me a lot to think about for my own creative process, now that I’m getting back into writing again.

[Charity P. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Every once in a while I read a memoir by a mediocre upper middle class straight cisgender white man to be reminded of how utterly boring their lives seem to be, and how few challenges it takes for them to (temporarily) fall apart.

If that sounds at all intriguing, this might be the book for you!

[Andrea]

Mea culpa for choosing to read a memoir by a poet as I do not love reading poetry and hence doing a deep dive into drafts of this poets poems, was not my idea of a fun read. The memoir is bit navel gazing, however if you love poetry you might love understanding this poet’s process.

[Paige Wyatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I’ve ever read.

[Kate]

5books.com
national book critics circle shortlist 2024

[Sebastian]

First read: March 22, 2024, Friday

[jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been recommending this to everyone I know who is interested in poetry, autism, or just reading itself. So good!

[geo]

.6 … no !!!

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Warning: this book will make you write poems. Horny poems, nature poems, peoples about people, poems about trees. Yes, fucking trees.

[Gwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a lovely surprise that gifted artists are so often also generous and open with their process, knowing as they do that there is no need to guard their secrets. No one else can ever do our work, even if they try. This book, chronicling the writing of a poem, and showing us the evolution of the work as well as the poet, is wonderful. Zapruder is making a career not just as a poet, but as an ambassador of poetry, and this is an offering of generosity and beauty.