just one (chapbook) thing: matthew zapruder’s ‘der pyjamaist’

by Nathan Moore

Der Pyjamaist, by Matthew Zapruder

“It came together in this really amazing object.”

Struck by its shocking beauty, I’ve chosen to ask Matthew Zapruder about a new graphic novel version of his poem, “The Pajamaist,” which is the title poem from his Copper Canyon Press collection.

Zapruder has authored two collections of poetry: American Linden and The Pajamaist, selected by Tony Hoagland as winner of the William Carlos Williams Award. His poems, essays and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in many publications, including Open City, Bomb, Harvard Review, Paris Review, The New Republic, The Boston Review, The New Yorker, The Believer and The Los Angeles Times. He is also co-translator from Romanian, along with historian Radu Ioanid, of Secret Weapon: Selected Late Poems of Eugen Jebeleanu. His third full-length collection, Come On All You Ghosts, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2010. He lives in San Francisco, works as an editor for Wave Books, and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at UC Riverside-Palm Desert.

In this series, we ask the poet just one thing about their work. Below is my question for Zapruder, followed by his answer.

German publisher Luxbooks recently released a graphic novel in German of your title poem from the book The Pajamaist, with drawings by Martina Hoffman. How did that come about, and what is your reaction to seeing a visual interpretation of your work — in German no less?

The way it came about is Luxbooks, a wonderful publishing house in Germany that does extremely high-quality poetry books, has a division of the press where they publish contemporary American poetry in German translation. I don’t know exactly how they became aware of my work, but Ron Winkler, a German poet, translated a selection of my poems from my first two books as well as my third (forthcoming next year from Copper Canyon). Luxbooks also does illustrated books — they did one by Matthea Harvey — and asked me if I would be interested in a graphic novel version of the title poem of my second book, “The Pajamaist,” which is basically a synopsis for a novel that does not actually exist, about a person who discovers a way to transfer other people’s suffering to himself, so that he can suffer for them. To which of course my answer was yes.

Luxbooks found a fantastic German artist, Martina Hoffman, who has just the right sensibility (very contemporary, dark but also whimsical and full of feeling, and also somehow quite urban, which is right for this particular poem). Basically they did all the work with Martina and Ron. My only contribution was to tell them to use as much or as little of the text as they thought would make the best graphic novel, and not to worry about me, only the book. It came together in this really amazing object: The book is in a soft cover casing, and when you open it you see the actual graphic novel, along with a great little mysterious business card that gives a phone number and describes the services of the Pajamaist. The whole thing is perfectly done, and my reaction is that I love it, and hope people get to see it.

You can see the graphic novel version of the poem at artist Martina Hoffmann’s website. You can also order the collection through the Luxbooks site.

Nathan Moore is community director and columnist for Read Write Poem. In his spare time, he plays with his children and with fire. Never at the same time. He blogs at Exhaust Fumes and French Fries.