The Sky Contains the Plans

by Matthew Rohrer

Matthew Rohrer's latest collection explores the space between wakefulness and sleep, that drowsy loosening of consciousness called hypnagogia. Comprised not of dream-poems but poems that strain to hear dreams' faintest messages squeaked through into waking life, The Sky Contains the Plans lays bare an imagination in which the mundane and surreal contort each other into a new kind of primordial reality.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published April 7, 2020

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

[Tao · Rating 5 out of 5]

"All night the moon makes / a little sound"

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wondrous display of woozy dream logic. A showcase of leaps. How to begin with an absurd/nonsensical line and still manage to break the reader's heart. Rohrer is one of my favorite living poets and this collection is another spectacle. A book I'll have by my bedside for weeks/months to come.

[Isaiah Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Author's Note at the end definitely explains more about what the book is trying to do; Rohrer would write specifically when falling asleep/waking up or create this sort of "hypnagogic" feeling in each poem. He does admit he was executing this as more of a fun project, but I've rated it normally nonetheless. While interesting, many of the poems did not exactly have a point or resonant feeling. However, I suppose I'll try writing in that way as an entertaining exercise in the future.

[Joe Imwalle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dreamy. Surprising. Wonderful.