MATTHEW ZAPRUDER WILL SPEAK TO YOU. This isn’t a metaphor, or a mere recommendation: it’s a description of method. In “Come On All You Ghosts,” the title poem of his third and latest volume, Zapruder calls directly to whomever might be taking in his lines at that particular moment: “Reader,” he writes,

it doesn’t seem
very strange to be
here in this apartment

thinking of you
and how we will someday
(right now!) be together.

The tone here is characteristic, a blend of matter-of-fact candor and theoretical curiosity. 

Zapruder knows all about linguistic mediacy, having earlier described how

together we are

right now thinking
along by means
of an ancient mechanistic

system no one invented
involved super-microscopic
particles that somehow

(weird!) enter through
your eyes or ears…

But Zapruder’s awareness isn’t some all-too-knowing acceptance of textual remove: that “weird!” is both gently ironic and genuinely wonder-struck. This poet wants to communicate rather than presume, as the crucial word “together” in both passages emphasizes. He wants to figure out how writers can still reach readers. And he wants to show why it matters that they ...