Rise Up

by Matthew Rohrer

Overview

“Equal parts punk rock and pastoral, [Rohrer has] a voice that seems unearthly in its ability to be detached and simultaneously tender.”—American Poet

Approaching pleasure and terror with the same searching and determined curiosity, Rise Up traverses political, natural, and domestic landscapes with gentle agility. Beautifully crafted surfaces give way to sincere depth.

Matthew Rohrer is the author of A Green Light (2004, shortlisted for the Griffin Prize), Satellite, and A Hummock in the Malookas. He has appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered and The Next Big Thing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781933517186
Publisher:	Wave Books
Publication date:	04/01/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	72
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Matthew Rohrer is the author of Destroyer and Preserver, A Plate of Chicken, Rise Up, Satellite, and A Green Light, which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is also co-author of Nice Hat. Thanks. with Joshua Beckman, with whom he has participated in performances at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. He received the Pushcart Prize and his first book, A Hummock in the Malookas, was selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at New York University.

Table of Contents

Four Romantic Poets     1
Summer Poem     5
Winning Isn't Everything     6
This Postcard     9
Poem in the Manner of Coleridge     10
Poem Against Wordsworth     11
Poem [Describe the Shape]     13
Poem on the Radio     14
Poem for the East River     15
Poem Glowing Blue and Orange     16
A Hawk is on Her Heart     17
Sharp     18
Poem     19
In a Bower of Rosemary     23
The Ideograms     29
The Darkness Needs a Little Shove     43
Statistics of Deadly Quarrels     51
Acknowledgments     65

Editorial Reviews

Hip, humorous, ironic, winking and deceptively footloose, the 17 stylish poems and sequences of Rohrer's fifth collection take a skewed look at the politics and passages of contemporary life. Written in jagged columns, these free verse poems weave their way in and out of public and personal spheres, always careful—sometimes overly so—to keep the reader at a playful distance. Surreal details ("Money burrows/ its way to the very core/ of the Earth") meet political protestations ("In the president's dream... / .../ I do not kill him./ Even in his own dream I do not shake his hand") in poems that take a fittingly indignant stance on an era when so much is wrong that it seems difficult to pinpoint anything. Rohrer (A Green Light) is also capable of great tenderness: "You were so sad: goodbye: I was so sad." The book also maintains an abiding fascination with 19th-century poets, with references to Claire, Shelley and Coleridge, among others ("I think I hear one of Keats' short poems"), who hang in the background of Rohrer's laid-back romanticism. There's a certain slacker mentality to these poems, which is both off-putting and appealing. Whatever one thinks, these poems are often startlingly accurate representations of their times. (Apr.)

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