A Green Light

by Matthew Rohrer

Matthew Rohrer’s simple, hilarious, generous and strangely disquieting poems conjure versions of the most familiar aspects of our lives—friendship, marriage, childhood, work—into which intrude incongruous, peculiar, fantastical, yet somehow totally recognizable elements. Over and over these poems leave us convinced that we’ve learned something very important and mysterious, yet we can’t say exactly what.

Genres: Poetry, Audiobook

96 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

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

[W.B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's nice but as soon as I started reading it I thought "Nice James Tate touches" and then I turned to the back of the book where James Tate is saying in a blurb "nice james tate touches" basically...with a bit of Salamun thrown in...and then there's Salamun blurbing also....there are some really nice poems in here....there is a sort of staginess in some of the poems, though, and I really didn't like the second section of the book "MK Ultra" where phrases are recycled throughout poems in a loose formalistic game...that whole section felt really forced and the poetry didn't work for me. He had a few little diamonds in here, short lyric pieces spinning and imparting a torque to the reader's mind....rather like funnier, higher-energy, more neurotic Creeley....if you like animals and anthropomorphic cutesy animals used as mascots of philosophical systems (shades of Tao Lin!) you will probably love this book....the thing that probably irked me most about the book is that it feels like an outsider pose of grace and naturalism but in every tiny nook and cranny you see glints of the staging...the frame of past "hipnesses" which is holding this all up....and the uncanny sense that the poet knows this is the perfect blend of nonchalance and feeling that the literary MOMENT seems to favor....en bref, it feels calculated....calculatedly "disarmed." That makes me nervous...I am an animal...I am always watching the brush around me...New York is some of the darkest brush around

[Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

became aware of an excited feeling at the end of each page of this book where i would pick up my iphone and start to take a picture of what i had just read to share it with people on the internet. at some point i realized that people on the internet would maybe not appreciate iphone photos of every page of this book but i still wanted everyone to read the whole thing so i am writing this review.

[Tao · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://muumuuhouse.com/mr.poetry2.html

[Eric T. Voigt · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan of poetry and someone finds that out and they start in with the "fuckin' pussy!" and "book worm wimp-hole!" and "intelligensia naziboy/nazigirl" and you've read Matthew Rohrer: you can whip out the Rohrer-card and play it and your attacker will have to back the hell up and reconsider everything they were calling you and realize you are reading a total badass of the written word and have to agree with you that poetry is SICK and that Rohrer is very very cool and that you have amazing taste in books. Like, not only is there a poem titled "Statue of a White Pig Bleeding From the Eyes" in this collection, but that poem has the following lines: "I travel through the night to visit my grandfather/but he's not where he should be./A note on his door says 'he was kidnapped for a nickel.'" Sick stuff.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good book of poetry. A very good poet recommended it to me. His name is Tao Lin. Tao Lin loves this book, and now I love it, too.

[Truong]

for matt rohrer who is a genius for the fact that he purchased a stolen bicycle from a kid in the mission he walked it home and proceeded to post this stolen bicycle on craigslist under the heading of lost and found eventually the bicycle found its way back to its owner who offered to buy him a beer at the pub as reward he politely answered no thank you matt rohrer does not drink he makes a mean vietnamese tofu barbeque sandwich and admits to surfing the internet for the occasional porn in some parts of the country this can be deemed as deviant behavior but here on the west coast it is not only encouraged but considered to be healthy also in keeping with his healthy disposition matt rohrer is an avid surfer and a freegan but i digress matt rohrer is a genius because today he reminded me that perception is fluid and overwhelming like how i saw myself as the crusty old uncle who tells his nephew to go back outside face the bully don’t come home without evidence of a fight a bloody lip or a shiner at least the size of a silver dollar i had an uncle like this once he died miserable and an alcoholic but again i digress matt rohrer is a genius because he wrote sometimes the intelligence of your heart and the heart of your heart are in disagreement and it made perfect sense making him a genius because he inspired me to write these words after i swore off writing for the hundredth time this is written not for any poem or book already in print by some poet going by the same name with numerous published books and an established career as a poet but rather for a book looking to find its way into the world written by a poet still looking for his name if you happen to find the name of this genius please go to craigslist post your findings under the heading of lost and found

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is what got me into poetry. I hear all too often the assertion that poet's are returning the meaning to language. Hog wash. I write and read poetry like a schizophrenic chinchilla and I can honestly say that in their little insular communities they may be reinvigorating language, but if the rest of the world has no idea what they're doing then they might as well be playing with themselves in the downtown bus station bathroom. Tell me stories, like Mr. Rohrer, or give me people, like Mr. Rohrer, and you are doing what poetry was meant to do.

Sorry about the rant. On any other day I might say something else about the status of poets and their beliefs.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 2/3 stars... excerpt from "Hone Quarry" from A Green Light by Matthew Rohrer:

At night, lying on warm rocks
I hear whippoorwills answer
each other. Their timing is
sexual. I'm too stupid
to realize it's lonely, it's
an echo. I am in love
with the way I see the world.
But I am all alone there.

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love a lot of the poetry of Matthew Rohrer. This one was not my favourite. It is ok. Worth reading of course. But I liked Destroyer and Preserver much much more. Maybe I will come back to it and find I like A Green Light a lot more in a year or two. Hm . .

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

New things rise up from it all the time

[Muumuu House · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://muumuuhouse.com/mr.fiction1.html

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating a book of poetry is hard, because each individual poem has it’s own unique pros and cons. Some poems in the book really grabbed me, but overall most didn’t and that is why I rated it two stars. Clearly this is well below the average, but even though I may be missing something I feel no desire to revisit it and try again. So much of poetry is subjective and about personal taste (more so than prose I would say). Just not for me.

[J.A.]

Sneaks of chuckles embedded throughout these almost punk rock poems.

[Jared · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh

[Arsene · Rating 1 out of 5]

Generally okay, but not for me. Imagery felt... flat.

[mar · Rating 4 out of 5]

weirdly compelling. im suspicious of how much i liked it

[Melting Uncle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pleasantly surreal and colloquial. Funny and profound. Effortless-seeming but also a lot of subtlety compressed into very few words. Definitely packs some strange epiphany moments to make your head swim. My library had audio of Matthew Rohrer reading the whole book which I listened to twice, once before reading and once after. Favorite poem was “Catechism.”

CATECHISM


Of my parents and origins I have little to say.

In church they actually told us
Catholicism was
“a big house full of cool, old stuff”.

I spent my time sitting
in the darkened apse
imagining the actual house.

Your Dominican mind tricks don’t work on me.

My knees suffered through Kumbaya.

Then there was the incident
of the professor who sneaked the holy water
out and poured it into the ocean.

He wrote a letter to the bishop
informing him that
all the world’s water was holy now.

He was also a harborer of homosexuals.

I am still in the dark
imagining the actual house.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't really get it. Everything everyone told me about this made me think I would love it. The language he uses isn't particularly appealing to me, and I don't think I really ever felt like I got pulled into any of the poems at all. There were so many lines that I just really really disliked and none that I was crazy about. I guess the big problem is that this was recommended to me as being "like Zachary Schomburg's poetry but better" and I'm not sure if there's anything I like better than Zachary Schomburg's stuff.

Poetry really is one of the most subjective art forms ever, so I can't really blame the writer or anyone who likes it. It was just disappointing because I was excited about reading this.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like this as much as I liked Rise Up. I will have to revisit this. It might have just been a mood I was in then thing. Rohrer is still amazing though.

[Mii · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great read!