July 13, 2011
Nothing Is Hidden Presents

NOTHING IS HIDDEN, San Francisco Zen Center’s series of readings, artist talks and screenings, is pleased to present an evening with acclaimed poets, Matthew Dickman and Matthew Zapruder.

Friday, August 26, 7:30pm, City Center, 300 Page Street, SF [directions]

Live video streamed on the  SFZC channel at LiveStream.

Matthew DickmanIf Fred Astaire were up and around again and dancing with a humming Frank O’Hara across the dear and broken landscapes of our lives, the sound of their steps, through the late spring afternoon, might have some of the sweetness of these poems. But these poems are sweeter than even that—and so bursting with knowledge and love they make me want to get up and dance myself… I didn’t know how much I needed this book until I read it. Now I carry it with me wherever I go.” —Marie Howe, (on All-American Poem)

Matthew Dickman is the author of All-American Poem (American Poetry Review/ Copper Canyon Press, 2008). The recipient of The Honickman First Book Prize, The May Sarton Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Kate Tufts Award from Claremont College, and the 2009 Oregon Book Award from Literary Arts of Oregon. His poems have appeared in Tin House Magazine, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, The Believer, BOMB online, and The New Yorker among others. W.W. Norton & Co. will publish his second book in 2012. He lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Matthew ZapruderZapruder writes with compassion and bafflement about loneliness and the broadcasting of war and other catastrophes, and he remembers his dead with candor and tenderness. Zapruder also ponders the unnerving juxtapositions of our world of earbuds, “sad crushed plastic,” and giant particle colliders. Of abundance and impoverishment, relentless connectivity and isolation in plain sight. “I am never / at ease.” “I feel like a mountain of cell phone chargers.” “I examine my feelings without feeling anything.” And yet these are deeply felt, exciting, and caring poems, droll and wistful, obliquely affirming, phosphorescently beautiful.” —Donna Seaman

Matthew Zapruder is the author of three collections of poetry. His most recent book, Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon, 2010), was selected as one of the year’s top 5 poetry books by Publishers Weekly, as well as the 2010 Booklist Editors’ Choice for poetry, and the 2010 Northern California Independent Booksellers Association poetry book of the year. His second collection, The Pajamaist, was chosen by Tony Hoagland as the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and by Library Journal as one of the top ten poetry volumes of 2006. The recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in San Francisco, where he is an editor at Wave Books and a member of the permanent faculty at the low residency MFA in creative writing at UCR-Palm Desert.

The SFZC Bookstore has copies of the authors’ books in stock and books will be available for purchase at the event.

Suggested donation: $10, no one turned away
Advance tickets not required

NOTHING IS HIDDEN is a monthly series of readings and artist talks at SF Zen Center. The series is dedicated to celebrating the 2010, 40th anniversary of Shunryu Suzuki’s classic book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and features contemporary writers and artists whose work, while not necessarily engaging the book overtly, embodies the robust compassion and engaged curiosity at its heart.

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For more information, please contact series curator Genine Lentine at genine.lentine@sfzc.org

Much gratitude to Whole Foods, at 690 Stanyan Street, Rainbow Grocery, at 1745 Folsom, and Cole Hardware at 956 Cole Street for their generous support in donating supplies for mini disaster kits, to be distributed free at the reading.

And many thanks to Annemarie Munn  for her dedicated efforts in designing and printing the beautiful broadside, which will also be available at the reading. And thank you to San Francisco Center for the Book and Mohawk Paper for supporting this project.

More thanks still to Patrick Marks at The Green Arcade for handling booksales for the evening.