Matthew Zapruder on James Tate ("Quabbin Reservoir")

Close Readings

How is poetry like skipping stones across the surface of a lake? How might a poem be like an undelivered letter or package? Matthew Zapruder joins the podcast to talk about James Tate's "Quabbin Reservoir," a poem that raises those and other questions—and does so with Tate's gorgeous ear for weird idiom, full of both humor and feeling. (For the backstory on the place this poem is—at least on its surface—about, see this story.)

Matthew Zapruder is the author of five books of poems, including, most recently, Father's Day (Copper Canyon, 2019), and two books of prose: Why Poetry (Ecco, 2017) and Story of a Poem: A Memoir (Unnamed, 2023). He is editor at large at Wave Books and teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary's College of California. You can follow Matthew on Twitter.

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