American Linden

$19.95

by Matthew Zapruder

It is rare to come across a first book that embraces the world the way we see it, and the way it can be imagined—with such a wise and graceful mixture of humor, loss, intelligence, wit, self-deprecation, and hope. American Linden is such a first collection. The poems in this book are valuable, even necessary. They are, in the most important sense, love poems: to people, to ideas, to feelings, and to the mind itself, which by means of language move with honesty, wit, and distinction among the fleeting things of this world.

by Matthew Zapruder

It is rare to come across a first book that embraces the world the way we see it, and the way it can be imagined—with such a wise and graceful mixture of humor, loss, intelligence, wit, self-deprecation, and hope. American Linden is such a first collection. The poems in this book are valuable, even necessary. They are, in the most important sense, love poems: to people, to ideas, to feelings, and to the mind itself, which by means of language move with honesty, wit, and distinction among the fleeting things of this world.

About the Author

Matthew Zapruder was born in 1967 in Washington, D.C. He holds a B.A. in Russian Literature from Amherst College, an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is the editor of Verse Press, teaches poetry at the New School, and plays guitar for The Figments. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines and journals, including The Boston Review, Fence, Crowd, Jubilat, Both, The Harvard Review, and The New Yorker. He is also the co-translator of Secret Weapon, the final collection by the late Romanian poet Eugen Jebeleanu. American Linden is his first book of poems.

Advanced Praise

Publishers Weekly has this to say about American Linden: “Matthew Zapruder, editor-in-chief at Verse Press, makes his own verse debut with American Linden, sure to receive cognoscenti attention…”

“American Linden took me back to some familiar neighborhoods, but through the unfamiliar language of a new guide, whose stops and turns and sideways glances ‘down alleys/ that do not yet exist’ call into existence a ‘borderless world’ where ‘nothing resembles anything else.’ Often whimsical, always lyric, this poetry is ceaselessly travelling; I was glad to be taken along on its journeys.” –D. A. Powell

“By turns fabular and urbane, American Linden signals from a precarious life that is made more beautiful and precious for its entanglement and peril. With Chaplinesque elegance, the inventiveness of these poems is balanced with a sense of fatedness, both dire and deft. I’m reminded of being on one of those airport conveyor belts: one seems to be at a sprint while only walking; part of this book’s stately accomplishment is its deceptive speed and extravagance. Its distortions never lead to disfigurement. Matthew Zapruder is a dangerous poet; his poems implicate us in demonstrations of lift-off and escape velocity while also proving the calamity of gravity.” –Dean Young

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-932195-05-7