A Poem by Matthew Rohrer

I ordered Matthew Rohrer's book Rise Up and it came in one day!

True, it was only coming from Brooklyn...but one day!!

I'm enjoying it. It came out through Wave Books. So far I've liked every book I've seen from that press.

When I opened the book at random I came to these lines first and they made me laugh...

I hate the people who barely
move, who smack the table
with the flat of the Sword
of the Absolute.
I like to lie on my back & listen
to the tiny chiming of
the sword dissolving in the river.

I want no one to have reason
to hate me, although I hate
them, I hate them all. I lie
on my back
and suck in the clouds
through a long straw.



This is the first section of a multipartite poem (or book section?) titled "In a Bower of Rosemary."


I haven't read much in here yet but I see there is an engagment with some of the poets of the nineteenth century, and not always in a cheerful manner. There is a "Poem Against Wordsworth," for example.

But Rohrer's poems often rabbit-box aggression and the other Greatest Hits of human irrationality. His most aggressive poems usually have had their heads cut off and are still flailing about, sword in hand, in the best Monty Python manner. You just watch the sword slicing air as the blood spurts out the neck stump and you giggle. You have to.

But it's done in a very tasteful manner. The severed head blood gushing thing.

I mean it!