Surrounded by Friends

by Matthew Rohrer

"Rohrer's frequently beautiful, brief poems are rooted in specific images that initially seem unrelated—but which ultimately form a unity as meditations on how the ordinary distractions of everyday life can be seen as the source for almost everything important in life."—Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly The poems in Matthew Rohrer's seventh poetry collection are generated by, and embrace, friendships with the living, the dead, and the inanimate. Friends, family, and the urban peoplescape are gathered together in these poems, with more and more poetic voices joining in, and ending with poems written "in collaboration" with Kobayashi Issa, Yosa Buson, Matsuo Basho, and Hafiz. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LONELIER There is absolutely nothing lonelier
than the little Mars rover
never shutting down, digging up
rocks, so far away from Bond Street
in a light rain. I wonder
if he makes little beeps? If so
he is lonelier still. He fires a laser
into the dust. He coughs. A shiny
thing in the sand turns out to be his. Matthew Rohrer has received the Hopwood Award for poetry, a Pushcart Prize, was selected as a National Poetry Series winner by Mary Oliver, and was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. He is the co-author, with Joshua Beckman, of Nice Hat. Thanks. , and the audio CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty . He has appeared on NPR's All Things Considered and The Next Big Thing . He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at NYU.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2015

About the author

Matthew Rohrer is the author of Destroyer and Preserver (forthcoming from Wave Books in 2011), A Plate of Chicken (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009), Rise Up (Wave Books, 2007) and A Green Light (Verse Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is also the author of Satellite (Verse Press, 2001), and co-author, with Joshua Beckman, of Nice Hat. Thanks. (Verse Press, 2002), and the audio CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. He has appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered" and "The Next Big Thing." His first book, A Hummock in the Malookas was selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver in 1994. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches in the undergraduate writing program at NYU.

For more information on this author, go to:
http://www.wavepoetry.com/authors/32-...

Reviews

[Ken]

If you write poetry, you read poetry. What's weird is how reading some poets' work inspires you with ideas of your own, while reading others inspires...nothing. It doesn't mean the poet is BAD if they do not inspire -- in fact, they can be depressingly talented -- but the inspirational ones are often writing approachable stuff like a particularly docile and friendly horse happy to come over to the fence and munch carrot or cube from your hand.

Yes, yes. It all looks so simple, kind of like imitating Hemingway in short story writing. Then, when you go there, you see that your work is very un-Hemingway, so maybe there's some hidden complexity in the simplicity's weeds. That happens with the poets that inspire, too, but hey, at least it gets words churning in the brain and marching on the paper (or screen).

As you might have guessed, Matthew Rohrer is one of these approachable guys. Short poems. A bit off-the-wall poems. A little this, a little that. Some non sequiturs thrown in. Unusual word pairings. Thoughts local and worldly. Lines three to six words short. By way of two examples, I give you these:


Where I Lived

I live up here,
you live down there,
he said, touching first
my forehead then
my sternum; come up
and see me sometime,
and flicked my nose
as he said this,
traveling up from where
I lived to where he lived.
He also said, every time
our family saddled up
to depart, see you in the
funny papers, which was
another place he mistakenly
believed I lived, when I lived,
as everyone knew, in an
enormous mitten with a beetle,
a mouse, a hedgehog, a hare,
a badger, and other increasingly
large creatures of the forest,
and waited there for a stranger's
kiss to set me free. His own wife,
my grandmother, knitted it for me.


Autumn Glory

Looking at old pictures
I'm on fire
don't show your dad
how it says Legalize it
on the other side of the hill
now we are older
it's like that whole place
shifted out from under us
the self is the constant
past which time flies
until a cloud melts
through the wall
it is a translation
of an abstract painting
into a feeling
I don't even have
I have a slight fever
while feeding the kids
and in a dream
they eat candy
on top of me
and when I wake up
autumn glory and candy wrappers

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best poems exalt the everyday into something special. Rohrer’s, though, just set the everyday out there as if its value is inherent. Most of these poems are about ordinary moments with his wife and kids: picnics in the park, subway rides, etc. – incidents that don’t have meaning unless the language gives it. Unfortunately, not one of these poems stood out for me. I noted the following lines as examples of the plain style and subject matter:

He has a job, but it’s a sad job.
He has to wear a tie. He drinks
a beer in the church when no one’s
looking.
________________________

Kelly you were so tall!
You had long legs
and you did a good job
shaving them.

Not even the poems imitating Issa or Basho rise far above this level. On this evidence, I wouldn’t try another Rohrer collection. (I admit I half chose to read this because he has my best friend’s last name.)

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book reminded me why I fell in love with poetry. The meaningful lines. The raw emotion. It was all beautiful. And holy crap, that Mars rover poem was perfection.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh mars rover poem, i fucking love you. looks easy breezy but hard to do.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this. I dog-eared so many of the pages I should have just folded the whole book over.
I particularly loved "Birthday Sonnet" and "There Is Absolutely Nothing Lonelier" and the translations from Hafiz! A very refreshing read.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of these poems caught me by surprise. Another reviewer said something similar. There is a haunting, sometimes mournful quality to them and yet one reads it and FEELS something...sort of elusive but stirring. Then, upon rereading, there is recognition or beauty or understanding or not understanding but liking anyway. I received this book through the "Library Thing Early Reviewer" program. What a lovely gift of a book. One poem, in particular, kept urging me back. The very short "Bull Shark" made me think about awakening, growing up, looking to the future whatever that may be. Lovely! I have no idea if that was the poet's intention, but it spoke to me of a child's moving toward adulthood.

[library fairy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book from my university and was fortunate enough to hear Matthew Rohrer read quite a few of these poems for a small audience. I think it's a enjoyable collection. He touches life delicately and with an immense fondness, while still managing to work in some traces of humor. In the third and fourth sections of the book, he draws inspiration from, in a sense collaborating with, other famous poets. The amalgam of personal experiences and unlikely collaborations makes this collection as unique as it is pleasant.

[Delia Rainey · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice book to read after walking around brooklyn on a 54 degree day in the winter time, very alone but surrounded by people on walks with their partners or with their daughters and sons, and i was looking at my phone for validation, i had earbuds in but not listening to anything, i looked at a mound of garbage and saw two tiny paintings of two ancient people, i saw banana peels, the bakery worker said "we r sold out" and i said "good job"

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could almost give this 5 stars for the Hafiz, which reminded me of Bukowski. The casual tone throughout that sounds easy to write but deceptively so. A book about love, friendship, parenthood, and the joy in life's minutiae.

[Eric Komosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some well-updated O'Hara here and more. Crazy line pacing. Zapruder for sure. For the fantastic Hafiz translations, if anything.

[Eric T. Voigt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comforting poems that take a beautifying magnifying glass to small moments, and highlight the deepest emotions in lyrical single-pagers.

[Greg Bem · Rating 4 out of 5]

My head responded to a poetry of normalcy I've rarely known.

[Gabriela Silva · Rating 1 out of 5]

"There is absolutely nothing lonelier" is the only poem that I liked. Liked but not loved.

[Victors · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like Rohrer's imagery. This book is solid.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

whole book was consistently good.

numbered poems made me uncomfotably thoughtful.

fav poem: Bull Shark

[danielle; ▵ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone who lives in the city is drunk with it and cannot leave. They are surrounded by friends.

Great stuff.

[Eoin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is somewhere between unfinished student work and prose with awkward line breaks. Lacking in specificity, clarity, feeling, image, meter, and sound there is not much here. The scattering of cliché tips this from "not my taste" into "no good". One must assume Rohrer was surrounded by uncritical friends to publish this.

[Grace B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first collection of poetry that I have ever read, outside of a school setting. I found the book in a poetry section of a small independent bookstore in a college town and wanted something different than what I usually read. The title appealed to me so I picked this collection.

There were many poems that I enjoyed and others that I couldn't quite wrap my head around. My favorites being "The Emperor," "There is Absolutely Nothing Lonelier," and the collection of Translations from Hafiz. Regardless of whether I completely understood everything upon the first reading, I enjoyed it. The poems gave me a taste of the beauty of simplicity and everyday life. Although this is the first collection of poetry I have read it certainly will not be the last.