anthonyopal

[anthonyopal]

HOW TO CONTINUE by Matthew Zapruder is now available for pre-order.

In addition to the pre-order discount, the first 50 copies will be hand-numbered and signed by the author.

Author: Matthew Zapruder

Booklet, 42 pp, 7 × 5.25 in

Language: English

ISBN: 979-8-9991646-3-6

Release Date: August 19, 2025

Publisher: The Economy Press

“Matthew Zapruder has a razor eye for the remnants and revenants of modern culture.” -THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Zapruder’s verse offers solace and an invaluable blueprint for empathy.” -PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

[anthonyopal]

“Elegy for a Cosmonaut – for Dean Young” from HOW TO CONTINUE (now available for pre-order)

“Matthew Zapruder has a razor eye for the remnants and revenants of modern culture.” –THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Zapruder’s verse offers solace and an invaluable blueprint for empathy.” –PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

*Read more about this upcoming release and “Elegy for a Cosmonaut” at Matthew Zapruder’s Substack

[anthonyopal]

HOW TO CONTINUE by Matthew Zapruder is now available for pre-order.

In addition to the pre-order discount, the first 50 copies will be hand-numbered and signed by the author.

*

why am I writing anything down,

watching men on television

discuss how many times

the world can end,

for a moment

it doesn’t matter

as long as it happens

when I am building

a tower with my son,

he tells me where I must put

the little block so tiny people

he says are us will have a place

to sit and watch the end

(from “Elegy For A Small Metal Artifact”)

*

Author: Matthew Zapruder

Booklet, 42 pp, 7 x 5.25 in

Language: English

ISBN: 979-8-9991646-3-6

Release Date: August 19, 2025

Publisher: The Economy Press

“Matthew Zapruder has a razor eye for the remnants and revenants of modern culture.”

–THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Zapruder’s verse offers solace and an invaluable blueprint for empathy.”

–PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

[anthonyopal]

HOW TO CONTINUE by Matthew Zapruder is now available for pre-order.

In addition to the pre-order discount, the first 50 copies will be hand-numbered and signed by the author.

Author: Matthew Zapruder
Booklet, 42 pp, 7 x 5.25 in
Language: English
ISBN: 979-8-9991646-3-6
Release Date: August 19, 2025

“Matthew Zapruder has a razor eye for the remnants and revenants of modern culture.”

–THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Zapruder’s verse offers solace and an invaluable blueprint for empathy.”

–PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

[anthonyopal]

“Outside all kinds of movement / The sun at an angle, illuminating leaves / My dad dies in reverse / I birth him by my choice to live”

THE PRESENT

Author: Emily Kendal Frey

Booklet, 42 pp, 7 x 5.25 in

Language: English

ISBN: 979-8-218-61923-7

Published: March 13, 2025

[anthonyopal]

THE SILVER AGE by Fanny Howe

“An organ of the soul: liver-red and shaped like a potato bag. With the crucified Mary inside.”

Fanny Howe sent me The Silver Age in 2013 for an issue of The Economy Magazine, an online literary and art journal that ran from 2012 to 2015.

A few days before the issue was set to go live, I emailed Fanny to ask about the status of her piece. Her response: “Thing is, I’ve fallen down a hole.” A few hours later: “Ok. I got out. This is the heart of what I’m working on.”

I had been expecting one, maybe two poems. Instead, I received over a dozen pages that were equal parts poetry, fiction, theology, and translation — i.e., completely Fanny Howe, both in content and generosity.

With Fanny’s passing on July 9, 2025, I wanted to make The Silver Age available as a thing to be held—and remembered—in remembrance.

Anthony Opal, Chicago, 2025

Author: Fanny Howe

Booklet, 26 pp, 7 x 5.25 in

Language: English

ISBN: 979-8-9991646-2-9

Published: July 11, 2025

[anthonyopal]

The pieces I’ve published by Fanny Howe will always be some of my favorites. Here’s one. RIP, Fanny. 

(“The Message,” The Economy Magazine Anthology, Volume 1)

[anthonyopal]

“When art becomes intense, loneliness emerges, clarity emerges, strangeness emerges. If it doesn’t go that far, it’s a lie. My past writing has been like wine, and not even the best wine. But from now on it will be like water - clear, bright, and rippling without overflowing - or so I hope.”(Santoka, Teihon Santoka Zenshu)

Through the kitchen

moonlight

alone

POEMS OF TANEDA SANTOKA is a short and varied collection of Santoka’s haiku. Each translation is accompanied by the original Japanese text and English transliteration (romaji).

Author: Taneda Santoka

Translator: Anthony Opal

Booklet, 12 pp, 7 x 5.25 in

Language: Japanese / English

ISBN: 978-1-7375909-3-4

Published: April 28, 2022

The Economy Magazine + Press

*POEMS OF TANEDA SANTOKA is a part of The Economy Press Haiku Pamphlet Series

[anthonyopal]

Matsuo Basho is the earliest and most revered of the great haiku masters. His impact on the form remains unmatched as his thinking continues to influence artists, philosophers, and students of aesthetics.

Suffering from depression and a persistent sense of loneliness, Basho’s work embodies wabi-sabi. While difficult to articulate, wabi-sabi, for Basho, concerns the pursuit of simplicity - “lightness” - and the beauty of loneliness, “akin to, but deeper than, nostalgia.”

POEMS OF MATSUO BASHO is a short and varied collection of Basho’s haiku. Each translation is accompanied by the original Japanese text and English transliteration (romaji).

Author: Matsuo Basho

Translator: Anthony Opal

Booklet, 12 pp, 7 x 5.25 in

Language: Japanese / English

ISBN: 978-1-7356630-5-0

Published: September 18, 2020

*POEMS OF MATSUO BASHO is a part of The Economy Press Haiku Pamphlet Series

[anthonyopal]

TAPE LOOPS, 2011 / theeconomypress.com

Author: Anthony Opal

Booklet, 22 pp, 7 x 5.25 in

Language: English

ISBN: 979-8-9991646-0-5

Published: June 6, 2025

[anthonyopal]

TAPE LOOPS, 2011 / theeconomypress.com

Author: Anthony Opal

Booklet, 22 pp, 7 x 5.25 in

Language: English

ISBN: 979-8-9991646-0-5

Published: June 6, 2025

[anthonyopal]

IURODSTVO means “holy foolishness” - the prophetic tradition of acting and speaking in shocking and unorthodox ways in order to communicate spiritual truths.

Ken Feit (1940–1981) was a Chicago-born poet, performer, and self-proclaimed “itinerant fool.”

Relatively unknown, Feit’s writings show him to be one of the most thoughtful practitioners of western iurodstvo.

Collected here is a selection of Feit’s reflections on the role of holy foolishness regarding justice, compassion, and identity.

Author: Ken Feit

Editor: Anthony Opal

Booklet, 24 pp, 7 x 5.25 in

Language: English

ISBN: 978-1-7356630-9-8

Published: December 10, 2020

[anthonyopal]

POOLGOER and SPELEOGRAPHER - a double self-portrait.

Author: Jon Woodward

Booklet, 22 pp, 7 x 5.25 in

Language: English

ISBN: 978-1-7356630-1-2

Published: May 25, 2022

The Economy Magazine + Press

[anthonyopal]

“There’ll probably be some music, but we’ll manage to find a quiet corner where we can talk.” (John Cage, ‘Erik Satie’)

THE ROOF ABOVE OUR HEADS is a book-length poem in facing monostichs - moving out from zero.

Author: Anthony Opal

Booklet, 64 pp, 7 x 5.25 in

Language: English

ISBN: 978-1-7375909-0-3

Published: July 10, 2021

[anthonyopal]

Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) is often listed as the last of the haiku masters, following Basho, Buson, and Issa. Still, Shiki remains distinct in his modernist approach, taking influence from Western writers and artists while reflecting changes within his own society.

In his Outline of Haikai, Shiki stresses “copying things as they are,” foreshadowing Imagism’s “direct treatment of the thing.” In the same text, Shiki writes about the importance of combining “reverie (kūsō) and realism (shajitsu),” allowing for a kind of reflective minimalism - sketches, both exterior and interior.

I go

you stay

two autumns

In recent years, Shiki’s work has found several critics (especially when set beside Basho, Buson, and Issa). But while Shiki certainly took influence from those who went before him, his goal was not to tread the same ground.

Reading

three thousand haiku

two persimmons

With the twentieth century looming, people everywhere were coming together and being pulled apart. Watching smoke hang in the night sky, Shiki doesn’t write about the beauty of fireworks, but rather:

Alone

after the fireworks

it’s dark

POEMS OF MASAOKA SHIKI is a short and varied collection of Shiki’s haiku. Each translation is accompanied by the original Japanese text and English transliteration (romaji).

Author: Masaoka Shiki

Translator: Anthony Opal

Booklet, 12 pp, 7 x 5.25 in

Language: Japanese / English

ISBN: 978-1-7375909-9-6

Published: May 12, 2023

*POEMS OF MASAOKA SHIKI is a part of The Economy Press Haiku Pamphlet Series

[anthonyopal]

TAPE LOOPS, 2011 - Now Available

“we were / pianos stuck / in God’s cowlick”

Author: Anthony Opal

Booklet, 22 pp, 7 x 5.25 in

Language: English

ISBN: 979-8-9991646-0-5

Published: June 6, 2025

The Economy Press, $10