The Story of a Poem

How does a poem get made? If you are looking for a straightforward, IKEA set of instructions, you won't find them here. Zapruder's memoir is, in part, an account of drafting, and redrafting, and redrafting again a poem that becomes almost unrecognizable from its origins, but it is much more about the life in which that redrafting takes place, of a marriage, of his sobriety, of friendships and poetic influences, of our political time, and, especially, of parenting his young autistic son, whose relationship to language is so different—but equally intense—from his own. His poems and his memoir both have an almost disarming and intentional simplicity, as if he's trying to sift his words until he reaches the most basic, and honest, expression.