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.

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.

Awards

Matthew Zapruder’s poem “Scarecrow” from American Linden was featured in a St. Louis Poetry in Motion® poster. Poetry in Motion® is an outreach program from the Poetry Society of America that brings poetry to commuters in major metropolitan areas. Zapruder’s poem (the poster is below) was one of the first to be featured in the St. Louis program and remained up until June of 2007.