It’s one thing to know all those things. And it’s another to watch him walk onto the stage in what can only be described as a cloak, sit behind the piano on a mostly dark stage, and with his band run through 90 minutes of absolutely transcendent weirdness.

Last night Sarah and I went to see him play at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, which is arguably the greatest possible place to see a show. It was a perfect night, translucent weather. The stone benches were pleasurably oppositional to our butts, so we felt at attention, and truly even a bit ancient Greek. We sat next to two older ladies, a couple, who told us they came regularly to see all the shows, and that they especially appreciated Dylan’s reputed promptness: on at 8:30, off by 10pm. Unlike Streisand and Lady Gaga, they said, who made everyone wait. I pointed out that those two are, literally, divas, an assessment which they did not dispute.

John Doe opened the show. He was excellent. I think he was wearing a blue Nudie suit. Then Lucinda Williams. She had to be helped to the mic, after effects of her stroke. She stood the whole set, and sang almost like herself, though she could not quite get to the high notes (as my friend pointed out when I texted him after, neither can any of us). She sang many of my favorites, including Fruits of My Labor. She urged us to go to the No Kings protests, and pointed out that tonight, on Donald Trump’s birthday, we needed to keep speaking up, and that in the end you can’t keep the people down. But what happens before the end? She closed with Rocking in the Free World.

As we waited for Dylan, I got ready to feel very emotional. My dad had adored Dylan, and I had grown up inside his music, often playing on records in our house. I listened to him obsessively in college, and wrote my senior thesis on him and the Soviet actor and singer Vladimir Vysotsky (imagine a cross between Tom Waits and James Dean). He and the Beatles (and later Pavement, who I’m going to see in July here in Oakland) have been the musical constants of my life. I have more respect and love for Dylan than for any other living artist, and most dead ones.

I also knew that I was going to hear very few of his hits, if one can call them that. When you think about it, it’s absolutely extraordinary that Dylan did not do what any sensible person would have in his position: go out and play the songs people know in a relatively recognizable way, mixed with some new stuff and things he wants to do. Give the people what they want. Or what they think they want. That is the crucial distinction.

For years Dylan has toured constantly, and he has for decades refused to play a show the way you would expect if you were a fan, casual or otherwise. I have no idea whether this was a conscious plan with a long term objective, or innate rebelliousness, or something that he did because he wanted to. Probably some people know, he has probably talked about it, but from my perspective, it just seems like a fantastic mystery.

I won't go on and on. The show was transcendent. Mostly what I felt was relief. I wasn’t emotional, mostly, though at times hearing him sing reminded me that so many things in my life have happened, and now are gone, and his music was there all the time. This music was not about him. In a way, anyone could do what he did, which was to get up and not to depend in any way on his celebrity, his history, his Dylan-ness, but just to make a space where we could experience something singular. Anyone could do it, but very few can. And that is the difference.

His performance reminded me of what I believe constitutes artistic integrity: if I can ever create such a space (in performance or otherwise) with poems or music, I have not wasted my life.

He was in a cloak, and he cloaked us all in mystery and duende and mortality and timelessness. The only songs I recognized were All Along the Watchtower, Trying to Get to Heaven (a great song on Time Out of Mind), and the closer, Every Grain of Sand. The band was absolutely perfect: they play exactly the way I dream a band of mine will someday play, the sound I have heard in my head a million times. Bass locked down, two guitarists just holding it down with the absolutely perfect edge of breakup natural tones, playing only what is necessary, drummer also locked in, Bob on keys and singing. It was dark on the stage and there was no possibility of seeing his face. But he was there. When he played the harmonica I felt a great wonder in my soul. He is the only one who can play like that, and it sounds just like it did from the beginning.

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Sarah and I both thought it felt like if you walked into your local bar and some band was playing, and you started listening, and realized that they were something really special. You didn’t know any of the songs, and it didn’t matter. The atmosphere was incredibly intimate, maybe even reverent, though without pompousness. It was the exact opposite of whatever monstrosities are going on in front of the White House, motorcycles doing flips, people punching each other in the face. The absolute worst of America on the east coast, and the very best on the other.

I said, he’s like a ghost. And Sarah said no, he is a witch. She was right. A Great Witch, or Which. He cast the greatest spell of all, which was to turn us into whatever is the opposite of being customers. We were there to be there, not to be pleased or entertained. It wasn’t what we thought we wanted, it was what we wanted. I don’t know if this is the last time I’ll see him, probably, but if you get a chance, I think you should go.

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You can register here, hope you are all doing ok, despite everything.

https://communityofwriters.org/gift-of-deep-song/

here’s a beautiful translation of one of my favorites, by Merryn Williams

I’m thinking of you all. It’s so hard to focus these days, and find a rhythm of living that is not disrupted by fear. I mean we all should be feeling fear, but also hope and joy and solidarity. I hope you are all staying as safe as you can be.

One thing that helped me recently was to do an event at Clio’s with the DSA and the Oakland Education Association Rapid Response Team, a group of Oakland educators organizing to protect families from ICE. They organize community patrols and raise funds to provide legal aid, click here if you want to donate. Just being in the room with with people who are taking action and being in solidarity felt good. Zeina Hashem Beck, Jason Bayani, and Sara Borjas gave amazing readings. I read some poems too.

Another thing that helps is to read a poem closely, and just sit with it. I’m getting ready to teach an on-line class on Tuesday on how to read a contemporary poem, which in some ways is an absolutely absurdly vast subject to even begin to approach. But I have some thoughts of ways to do it. Reading closely for me is always the way I get back to writing. For me, reading poetry is really about accepting and embracing and getting excited about what is challenging, unexpected, new, different. Reading poems has changed me. I feel like if everyone read poems there would be less evil in the world. I realize that’s naive, but I can’t help thinking it.

The class is Tuesday night at 4pm PST on line, it’s called Reader, You Already Know.

What else. Victoria Chang and I are teaching a class in March, five sessions with discussions, etc. on probably my favorite poet, Lorca. I can’t wait to hear what she thinks about him, we try to avoid talking too much about it until the actual class. She’s brilliant and I always see things in new ways when I get to hear her talk about poetry. Reading Lorca has helped me push away the darkness a little, maybe just in favor of another form of darkness that is realistic yet also hopeful. The course is called Gift of Deep Song. If everyone read Lorca there would definitely be less evil in the world. Maybe none.

Lorca wrote, “Poetry is like faith – it isn't meant to be understood but to be received in a state of grace. No one should say "this is clear," because poetry is obscure. And no one should say "this is obscure," because poetry is clear.” Word.

This poem by Lorca has helped me. And this one by Tranströmer. “A helmet worn by no one has taken power.” Poets understand politics better than anyone except maybe crows.

Lately I’ve been playing more music than writing. We Are Leaves (my band here in the Bay Area) has a benefit show coming up for a program that supports neurodivergent kids, next Friday evening at the Community Hall in Piedmont. If you’re in the Bay Area and want to come by and hang out and hear some indie pop and just be in community, we’ll be here. You can give whatever you want or just show up at the door or whatever, all are welcome, including kids.

Here’s a Letter from Minnesota by my friend the poet Dobby Gibson about being in Minneapolis during the horrors.

And a new poem below that inexplicably appeared in a magazine about skiing called Hard Pack, which is actually very beautiful and full of amazing essays and photos. They asked if I had any poems about skiing and I said no, but I have some poems about snow and mountains, which I guess are some of the required elements.

Stay safe and hope to see you all soon for something good.

Sorry about my giant face, more info about the class here.

I hope the holiday season finds you well. I have been lately felled by an evil cold, which has caused me to spiral into very on brand whirlpools of self-laceration. I have especially lately been wondering why it is that I am so much more into writing songs than poems. I think it has something to do with joy, which was the original title of this post, and then I added “deep,” I don’t even know exactly why.

In the coming year, I plan to try to investigate in writing (here and elsewhere) the relationship between songwriting and poetry. And when I say investigate I mean that truly. The two forms seem closely related to me, both in my own practice as well as in my reading and listening, though also different in important ways. But I don’t know how yet. I plan to try to figure it out, here. Maybe writing poems and songs is just the opposite of Black Friday: nothing that cannot be sold is ever on sale.

And yet, in addition to the many songs last year I also wrote poems, though I barely even remember doing so. Perhaps that is best. When I look back on those new poems, I think they are moving ever closer, ever asymptotically, to a way of thinking and being that feels true to me. Thanks again so much to Anthony Opal for publishing How To Continue, and thanks to those of you who have read it and written me such kind things about it. I think there are some copies left. This experience has made me really think as well about publishing, and the relationship of publishing to joy.

So much publishing is bound up in worry, anxiety, striving: will we be published, if so by whom, and once we are, will the experience be satisfying, will our publisher be happy, will the book “do well,” get reviewed, succeed, sell, win, etc. A series of unending worries. It seems that often the joy of writing gets subsumed by the needs of the marketplace, which is completely understandable and also very sad. Because I wonder if it is truly necessary.

I loved publishing my most recent full length collection with Scribner, mostly because I love working with my editor Chris Richards and the other people at the press, and because it came about beautifully. I did not love worrying that I was going to disappoint those people somehow if my book did not do what it was “supposed to do.” But after all, what is a book supposed to do? I think it is supposed to reach the readers who need it.

Another person for whom I am very thankful is Austin Kleon. I love his writing about creativity, and his spirit. He sent me some questions typed out, and asked me to respond to them with my own typing, which I was glad to do here. This was another form of publishing that felt really humane to me. If you don’t have a typewriter, get one! Maybe in a future post if people want it I will do a little tour of my personal typewriter museum.

Otherwise, I have started to prepare for a class I’m teaching with Victoria Chang, Gift of Deep Song, on the poetry of Lorca. Reading Lorca (along with Tranströmer and Follain) keeps reminding me about what I truly love about poetry. I so often repeat the quote from Lorca’s great lecture The Irresistible Beauty of All Things, mostly so I do not forget it myself:

Furthermore, as everyone knows by now, one must love poetry. Poetry is like faith – it isn’t meant to be understood but to be received in a state of grace. No one should say “this is clear,” because poetry is obscure. And no one should say “this is obscure,” because poetry is clear … What poetry cannot bear is indifference. Indifference is the devil’s armchair. But it is indifference we hear babbling in the streets, dressed grotesquely in self-satisfaction and culture.

Poetry that is clear and mysterious, direct and unparaphrasable, poetry that asks questions that cannot be answered, poetry that you want to return to again and again, poetry that does something prose (or music!) cannot do … that is what I want to read, and to write.

In music news, I am continuing to put down lead guitar tracks for an upcoming record by The Figments, stay tuned for songs by the great inimitable Thane Thomsen, and also getting ready to record with my band We Are Leaves. We have a new drummer! and will be playing some shows in the coming months, including at our local bar Cato’s next Wednesday December 10th, from 6-9pm, playing our songs plus covers by the Velvet Underground, The Cure, and Johnny Cash, a holy trinity if there ever was one.

I don’t know when I write if it will help anyone, including myself, but as soon as I start scribbling or typing or plunking away I feel a little bit better, as if I pushing away a little bit of the tenebrous. I forgot that word tenebrous even existed until I typed it! That’s a little deep joy for me.

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A very kind poet from Chicago, Anthony Opal, who runs Economy Press, is next month publishing a chapbook of some poems I’ve written since I Love Hearing Your Dreams. He makes such beautiful books and this is no exception.

It’s a limited edition, and the first 50 preorders will be hand numbered and signed. You can pre-order here - theeconomypress.com/HOW-TO-CONTINUE — preorders are discounted, and help him make the books.

If you are a paid subscriber to this substack, please send me your mailing address and I will send a complimentary copy in appreciation for your support. If you sign up to be a paid subscriber, I’ll send you one as well, for as long as they last.

I sent Anthony a bunch of poems and some prose from the past few years, and he put this book together. It was great to see someone else identify a commonality and unity in the poems that is retrospectively apparent, but which I could not see until he did. The title is a question I am asking myself all the time. What is the best, most meaningful, most helpful, kindest, most creative way to continue to write and create and live? I certainly don’t know, but I think it’s the right question to ask. The book ends with the title poem, a longer one that feels exciting to me, and points me in some new and familiar directions.

How to Continue comes out on August 19th. Thank you for supporting me, and this amazing labor Anthony does of creating hand made books. It’s the opposite of AI basically: to make a handmade chapbook of poetry. True poetry is in fact the opposite of AI, something I will just say and not explain for now. Surely in a post to come. I am so moved that Anthony does this work, and that he would put the time into this with my poems. Anthony is also a terrific poet and you can see his work and the work of others on the site, and buy other chapbooks as well and support him.

Substack has blown up for writers it seems over the past few months. We’ll see where that goes. For now at least it makes sense: it feels good to write into a group of people who are at least somewhat interested, as opposed to writing something and then consigning it to the variegations of the void. So I plan to write more and share more here, and in addition to share some special work in progress (poems, songs, and essays) with paid subscribers who I know would really be interested in it. More on that in the weeks to come, and if you have thoughts about what you’d like to see more of, please share them with me!

Here is one poem from How to Continue, dedicated to the late great Dean Young. I had more or less forgotten about this poem, and then found it again when I was gathering material for Anthony. One more thing to be grateful for. More soon,

xo m

Just a summer note to say, first of all, that I am thinking about all of you and hoping that you are safe, and finding ways to be creative and to love life despite the pressures of the real. The news is a horror. Let’s stick together.

This summer I’m working on some new poems, more on that soon, and trying to read things in addition to the aforementioned news, and to just be present with friends and family and strangers. I have found it hard to concentrate, but have been slowly, pleasurably reading a truly wonderful new book of poetry by Therí Pickens.

As some of you know, this past year or so I’ve also been writing a lot of music. Generally I have played lead guitar with The Figments, a band in Western MA (we are currently making a new record!), but this past year I started something with some amazing musicians and friends here in the Bay Area, and ended up writing songs really for the first time (more on that in a subsequent post).

The band is called The Date Nights. Some early demos are here, though we have written a lot since then. We are playing a show on Friday in SF at The Royale, such a cool bar. If you’re around come out and say hi. We start around 9pm which is usually when I go to bed but inside us I am sure we all have a young self who remembers when life only really began when old people went to sleep.

I’m including here a little demo I did of a new song, called Letter to a Photograph, recorded in one take, just singing into a mic, playing a resonator with a Krivo pickup (they are so good!). A resonator (otherwise known as a National Steel or Dobro, both of which are actually brand names like Kleenex or Xerox or can’t think of any other examples but you know what I mean) is early non-electric amplification technology. As my wife could attest I could go on for a long time very boringly about this, but will not.

This is mine, which I got for a couple of hundred bucks at a going out of business sale of a local music store. I play it pretty much every day. I should probably name it.

Someday I hope to get one of these though they are exorbitantly expensive so I will probably just happily stare at the photos. But if you love beautiful guitars click on the link.

The song is about a photo I have on my desk of my parents holding me as a very little kid, and is addressed to my dad who passed away a while ago, but I still think of him every day. I played it at the end of a reading I did at the Lighthouse Conference in Denver, which was a wonderful week. The whole time I was thinking, I wish The Date Nights were here so I wouldn’t have to be sitting up here by myself on this stage, terrified. Terrified with others is always better.

Thank you for reading, listening, and for subscribing, it’s really lovely to know that I can keep in touch with you all. Thank you especially to the paid subscribers, who make it possible for me to do things like put a little bit of resources into music, etc., which is not generally factored into the family budget. I am grateful and will be reaching out to you with the offer of some extra things, like hopefully interesting poetry and song related ephemera, etc. Truly, thank you.

Stay safe and more soon, Matthew

I’ve gotten a lot of requests to link directly to the course I’m teaching on Creative Practice, so here it is: https://myfivethings.com/series/five-things-ive-learned-about-maintaining-a-creative-practice-in-the-chaos/

The classes with be with me (March 11th), Amber Tamblin (March 18th), Victoria Change (March 25th), Ingrid Rojas Contreras (April 8th), Daniel Handler (April 22nd), and Maggie Smith (May 6th). Each class will be two hours, on line, and you can register for individual sessions or the whole dang thing.

Also, thank you so much to those of you who have joined with paid subscriptions. Your support allows me to carve out a little more time for creative pursuits amid all the obligations. I feel so fortunate for your support, and will be in touch with each of you soon, to thank you and also to see if I can send you anything (book, broadside, macrame version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, lock of Vasko Papa’s hair, etc.) to express my gratitude in a more material way.

Finally, for locals who want to come see the Date Nights play, we’ll be at Cato’s Ale House a week from this Sunday, March 2nd, starting around 6 or so until 8:30, and then playing a benefit show for programs that support neurodiverse kids on Friday, March 28th. You can get tickets for that here: https://piedmontstore.org/products/pie-piedmonters-for-inclusive-education-copy?variant=44904459272391

Thanks, and more soon. I hope you’re all doing ok.

I hope this finds you as safe and well as can be. A phrase keeps haunting me, I’m not sure where it came from: “Keep the light on.” Maybe it comes from Wallace Stevens, who wrote that the role of a poet is to share their imagination with others, and therefore to make it “become the light in the minds of others.” And thus “to help people live their lives.”

I’m trying to keep mine on, so I have the strength to help those who need help, and to keep doing my work. And to keep living fully so I never forget everything there is to lose.

I greatly admire and appreciate the essential chorus of voices expressing outrage, solidarity, fear, sorrow, even despair, even a little hope. I am grateful to everyone who is writing and thinking and engaging, and figuring out how to resist.

This semester I am teaching a class to a marvelous group of graduate students in the MFA at Saint Mary’s College. It’s called Everyday Creativity, and in it we are reading and discussing works that are emblems of continual creative engagement. Each student is also engaging in a daily creative writing practice. It’s a pleasure and honor to be in the room with young artists who are carrying forward the light of the imagination, and sharing it with others.

I have already gotten so much out of being with them, and therefore decided to teach a class on line so I could be in discussion and community with more people, Maintaining a Creative Practice in the Chaos. I’ll be in conversation over a series of weeks with some amazing writers: Amber Tamblyn, Victoria Chang, Daniel Handler, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, and Maggie Smith. These are writers I adore and revere and we’re going to talk about how to keep going and making. It starts on March 11th, please join if you want.

In my own spirit of making, I’ve been writing some new work, and playing a lot of music, which has been a real sustaining joy. My band back east, The Figments, is making a new record, and I am being sent the nearly completed songs and putting down lead guitar tracks. It’s weird to sit in my room in front of a computer by myself and play my guitar and have it sound massive and full of energy, as if I were with some of my favorite people in the world, and then to take the headphones off and realize they are thousands of miles away. But better that than not to rock at all.

And I’ve been writing songs and playing music with a great group of musicians here. Our band is called The Date Nights and we have some upcoming shows, one at a bar in the east bay on the eve of Sunday, March 2nd, and a benefit concert on March 28th for adaptive programs in the town where we live. I can’t currently locate our social media team to ask them why we don’t have any presence on the internet. But if you’re interested lmk and I’ll send more info.

Again, I do all these things not despite but because of the worry and helplessness I feel all the time. If it helps at all, I am sending you my light, and you can send me yours, so we’ll be ready for whatever comes.

Dear Friends,

I hope you’re all well as we move into fall, or as I like to call it, Bye Bye Leafies season. I’m on a semester long sabbatical, which seems to mainly involve catching up on long deferred tasks and getting reacquainted with my guitars, amps, and effects pedals, and playing with some good friends here in a new band called The Date Nights, as well as with my old friends The Figments back in Western Mass. I’ve also begun making our bed daily, a practice I highly recommend for its extremely high ratio of self-satisfaction to effort.

But on this Tuesday I’m glad to write you to let you know that Scribner is publishing a new book of my poems, called I Love Hearing Your Dreams. Some poems from the book and an interview are here, from the lovely folks at Only Poems. Early reviews have been very kind.

The cover is from a book many of you read in childhood, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes. Whilst as a child I personally was far too lost in a leather bound set of the diaries of Winston Churchill, as well as training for the Presidential Fitness Test, to waste time with such niceties, apparently it is a lovely tale about a bunny from the country who shows courage in the face of adversity and eventually achieves her dreams, a lesson I think frankly all of us could benefit and take comfort from in these autumnal times.

I will be doing several readings in the Bay Area, starting September 24^th in Berkeley, San Francisco (with Daniel Handler), and Marin (with Jane Hirshfield). I’ll also be in Boston with Steve Almond (well, Cambridge really, but that sounds confusing like I’m going to be in England), New York, and Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., among other lovely places. If you’re around, please come by and say hi to me and my illustrious interlocutors.

You can always go to my website or follow me on Twitter ugh to keep track of what’s up. Or better, just reach out to say hi. If you need a copy of the book for any reason just lmk. I hope this finds you all well. These are really tough and stressful times for so many of us, so my family and I send our love to you. We continue to hope and pray for peace and change.

Love, Matthew

*

You can preorder here.

Starred Publisher’s Weekly Review:

I Love Hearing Your Dreams

Matthew Zapruder. Scribner, $26 (128p) ISBN 978-1-66805-980-7

This elegiac and ebullient collection from Zapruder (Father’s Day) weaves through several forms of heartache and loss. “I keep learning if you don’t write it down/ the thought just flies away,” he writes, intent on fixing the materials of dreams, memories, and other disappearing phenomena to the page. The feelings and needs of others are central (“at last the museum/ has become/ a museum of empathy”), as these poems look backwards, almost against their will, recognizing that “life is elsewhere and the past/ always misremembered,” as it’s painted diligently in “the perfect color/ for disappearing/ at night into the deep/ park.” “All solutions are suboptimal” faced with the dilemma of revisiting difficult losses and fleeting joys, but relief, Zapruder suggests, is equally to be found in what was always innately impermanent: “none of us could stop/ laughing at ourselves which in those/ holy wasted days was everything.” These pages are rich with elegies for friends, loved ones, and strangers, but even these are self-conscious about the bind of time and the desire to seek a do-over: “what would/ a perfect elegy do? place the flowers// back in the ground?” Zapruder delivers a work of remarkable wit and disciplined emotional attentiveness. (Sept.)

Dear Friends,

I hope the new year is treating all of you very well. We’re all doing ok here, maintaining an outward stance of gratitude for the constant rain in northern California, and surviving an inner stance of massive worry for the world, along with hope.

Some pieces of news. First, Victoria Chang and I are teaching another class together on-line for the Community of Writers, starting in late April. In five sessions on Sylvia Plath, we’re going to look deeply into her work, to rediscover her as one of the great poets of the 20th century. I’ve been deeply immersed in her poems as well as a recent biography, Red Comet. She was an extraordinary individual and poet. You can sign up here.

I will be in New York in a few days, reading on Friday at 5pm with Victoria Chang at NYU. The event is free, but you have to RSVP here. Victoria’s new book is incredible, she is one of my favorite poets and I am so glad to read with her.

I’ll be reading from a new book, I Love Hearing Your Dreams, that will be out in September from Scribner (thanks to Daniel Handler for the cover suggestion).

I’ll be back in NYC a week later to read at the National Book Critics Circle Award ceremony, Story of a Poem is a finalist in the category of autobiography. I was pretty shocked when that happened, and quite pleased. The reading and ceremony are sold out, but you can find out how to watch on line here.

Finally, as you can see, I have migrated to Substack. My old newsletter service, Tiny Letter, has sent its final missive and become the Extinct Pony Express. As always, you will only hear from me a few times a year with news and wan jokes. As always, I love hearing from you about your realities and dreams. Stay strong, sending love from here.

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