As seen in the The New York Times Book Review "In characteristically short lines and pithy, slippery language like predictive text from a lucid dream, Zapruder’s fifth collection grapples with fatherhood as well as larger questions of influence and inheritance and obligation." ― The New York Times “[Zapruder] presents powerfully nuanced and vivid verse about the limitations of poetry to enact meaningful change in a world spiraling into callousness; yet despite poetry’s supposed constraints, Zapruder’s verse offers solace and an invaluable blueprint for empathy.” ― Publishers Weekly , starred review “Zapruder’s new book, Father’s Day , is firmly situated in its (and our) political moment, and is anchored by a compelling gravity and urgency.” ― The Washington Post The poems in Matthew Zapruder’s fifth collection ask, how can one be a good father, partner, and citizen in the early twenty-first century? Zapruder deftly improvises upon language and lyricism as he passionately engages with these questions during turbulent, uncertain times. Whether interrogating the personalities of the Supreme Court, watching a child grow off into a distance, or tweaking poetry critics and hipsters alike, Zapruder maintains a deeply generous sense of humor alongside a rich vein of love and moral urgency. The poems in Father’s Day harbor a radical belief in the power of wonder and awe to sustain the human project while guiding it forward. "In characteristically short lines and pithy, slippery language like predictive text from a lucid dream, Zapruder’s fifth collection grapples with fatherhood as well as larger questions of influence and inheritance and obligation."― The New York Times “Funny and a bit kooky in places, Zapruder’s poetry might be characterized as affable surrealism. Like Van Meter’s and Seeley’s memoirs, Zapruder’s collection is a book about the self that cares about the reader.”― Huffington Post “What can you expect of a poet who’s founder of Verve Press, lead guitarist for The Figments, and cocurator of the esteemed KGB reading series? Diverse and innovative poems that always shake up the reader, surprising and pleasing in equal measure.”― Best Poetry of 2006, Library Journal “Charming, melancholy, hip and at times hopeful, the 21 poems of Zapruder’s second collection take on personal subjects and meditate on life in cities and towns, friendship, love and the nature of poetry itself.”― Publishers Weekly “His subjects are, arguably, the eternal elements of poetry, but the way he addresses them is refreshingly modern... Zapruder’s poems don’t merely attempt beauty; they attain it.” ― The Boston Review “Matthew Zapruder has a razor eye for the remnants and revenants of modern culture.”― The New York Times Matthew Zapruder is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Sun Bear (Copper Canyon), as well as Why Poetry , a book of prose, from Ecco Press/Harper Collins (2017). He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a William Carlos Williams Award, and a May Sarton Award from the Academy of American Arts and Sciences. His poetry has been adapted and performed at Carnegie Hall by Composer Gabriel Kahane and Brooklyn Rider, and was the libretto for Vespers for a New Dark Age , a piece by composer Missy Mazzoli. In 2000, he co-founded Verse Press, and is now editor at large at Wave Books. From 2016-7 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine . He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is an Associate Professor at Saint Mary’s College of California. DECEMBER At first we all went down to the lake to hold hands, all the multicolored signs said with love we will resist, over my head I lifted my son so he could see what people look like when they hear the song Imagine, a few weeks later again people stood at the water, this time at night holding flashlight to say to fire you came without permission and took our young gentle soldiers for art so we will show even with our old technology we can see each other without you, others booed the mayor which was my friend said understandable, I don’t know what is anymore, everyone understands in a different contradictory way the so far purely abstract catastrophe so many millions of choices brought us, not too far from the water I sat on the couch below the sound of blades drinking amber numbing fluid my thoughts chopping the air feeling not what is the word to be a father equipped, mine never told me where to hide a brick of gold, for a long time I have known no voices will come at last to tell us how to stop pretending we don’t know if it is not safe for some it is not for anyone.   TUNNEL PARK eighty years ago during those famous dark times when the government paid men to build bridges and dams they carved