PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksZapruder has written a book intended to help mend the rift between poems and readers. He wants to restore our access to poetry’s considerable gifts, to aid us in reclaiming that birthright. By my lights, this is a noble and ambitious agenda … Why Poetry is intelligent, straightforward, lucid, and cleanly reasoned. The book reads like a single essay in some respects, because Zapruder’s central points about poetry not being a code, about its literary uniqueness and resultant usefulness, are patiently reiterated across his essays … The pieces included here are teacherly in the best sense. Why Poetry’s tone blends enthusiasm and erudition. Flashes of autobiography are integrated into the text, making the essays warmer and less lecture-y. In his prose Zapruder abides by his own maxim about poetry, that ‘clarity’ can be ‘a kind of generosity.’
