The Pajamaist by Matthew Zapruder

Another book I picked up at the library on Saturday was Matthew Zapruder's The Pajamaist. Being a Pajamaist here myself, my eyes were of course drawn to that title. And it has the greatest cover photograph (credit: Anonymous) wherein some poor young woman in a dimestore angel costume is being oh-so-dangerously hoisted HIGH over a city street by the "miracle" of wires and pulleys. Onlookers occupy the windows of the apartment house behind as she is cranked out to create some illusion of divinity, at great risk to life and limb. The girl has the most transcendent expression on her face...a sort of tolerant grace born of some mystical peace we are not privy to...rather like Rosmarie Waldrop. This image. Hmmmm....Am I hearing a Ferlinghetti poem playing softly in the background? Something about the poet's vocation? lol. I had seen Zapruder's name floating around, but I couldn't have told you a single fact about the guy or his poetry before finding this book. I'm entering the middle period now. The steel trap needs some WD-40.

Now I can tell you one thing: this is a really good book, and one worth owning. Wait, I told you two things. So the world grows.

I'm still reading it, but here are a few things I noticed so far...

* In the poem series (was this a separate chapbook? livre d'artiste?) "Twenty Poems for Noelle," the last three poems are the strongest and seem to form a little trio all by themselves.

* He writes in a beautiful "terraced" poem form that enjambs beautifully a la late W.C. Williams passim.

* He seems more "Europeanized" than most American poets, perhaps a felicitous residue from his work as a translator of Eastern European poets. Sort of like the glow of firefly bioluminescence on the fingers of insecticidal little kids on summer eves. It's niiiiizze. Oh God, please don't let him turn into Charles Simic later, though. That would really suck.

* He has a poem called "Haiku" that is four pages long but the first three lines exhibit the traditional (read: American elementary school codified) 5-7-5 syllabification of the form. I suspect he wrote that haiku first then decided to show the impossibility of haikuizing what needed to be said and very funnily smacked the haiku atop the little skyscraper at the end like a hat. In any case, that story sounds cute to me, so I'll keep believing that version of the poem's composition.

* He does this weird syntactical thing where he "awkwardizes" his lines by distancing the grammatical antecedents in his sentences. This is something which mimics the awkwardness of real thought and real speech. I hadn't seen that before in a poet done consistently. He does it consistently.

* He has a "thing" about Canada. Love-hate, but mostly love.

* For a New York poet, he has a very low ratio of "hipper than thou" name checking. When he cites a place in the city, it's because the poem is actually moving past it, not because he wants you to know how "new york" he is. Newyorkaise rhymes with mayonnaise. And what do we know about mayonnaise? It is a great divider of tastes...those who love it, love it to death and would sooner sell their mother to KIDNEYS R US than eat a sandwich without it...and those who hate it would rather eat an Atlantic City crackwhore's sour cream taco than taste it on anything. Just a thought for you, New York poets.

* "The Pajamaist," ostensibly a synopsis for an unwritten novel, actually reads like a short fiction that could have been written by Kafka if he had had a sense of humor. Well not the sense of humor that gave us "In the Penal Colony." Maybe more of a Kafka with a soupcon of Steve Martin...maybe a little bouquet garni of Martin herbs and spices.

* The book feels open like an open window. There is a breeze. The words flutter and look different through the embroidery on the lace curtains of your consciousness. You want to sit and feel the breeze a little and enjoy the formlessness the window is advertising.

* I don't know what else to say as I just started reading it. It's good. Pick it up.