Satellite

I'll never forget the time Matt Rohrer drove me and some of our friends up through Central California to Chico, at the tip of the Sacramento Valley, in the shadow of the Sierra Nevadas. We were there for a reading. It was a one day trip, and Matt Rohrer loaded us all in his van hella early and ate hella donuts and was kind enough to sit through the 49er game for me when we got to Chico. The Niners were terrible against the New York Giants; I think the long flight to the East Coast probably had s [...]

I'm so happy I was forced to discover this. Satellite was assigned reading for a poetry writing class I took my first term of college. I read most of it on a rainy October bus ride home and was astounded by Rohrer's simplistic and endearing poems about the bizarre wonderfulness of everyday experiences. Five years later, I still find myself returning to this book again and again. Nobody can write a love poem like Rohrer."My lover cradled a camerato her weakened eyes,to take a picture of where the [...]

I've Rohrer's poems over and over again. He has an impressive in your face style, but keeps it silly and fun. I've sang his poems while playing guitar. I've quoted his ideas to help explain my points. I recommend The Amaranth, a brilliant poem about young love.

This is a book that excited me when it was first published, and one that continues to excite me each time I return to it, come upon a moment in life that reminds me of it, or hand it off to a friend. It is modern poetry that just seems to fit.

This is the best book of poems I've ever read. Matts aesthetic is streamlined and gunmetal and Precision German Craftsmanship indeed.

I am sitting here in my apartment and I'm playing the mandolin. Lately, I've been having this fantasy where I sell all of my books and burn my furniture and little artist bed on the sidewalk in one huge pile and pack one bag full of some essentials and go live on a platform in the middle of the ocean. That seems like it would work for me in a lot of ways. Maybe, I am delusional. Maybe, what really needs to happen is I need to write a book of poetry and have it published and that will really get [...]

I want to give this 3.5 stars. Some days, it's a four. Once I re-read it and couldn't understand what I saw in it. Three months later, I was re-convinced that it was genius. Above all, I'm won over by his voice.

There's a robotroid girlfriend and an amaranth. Enough said.

eh.

A surreal waking dream. The Riot sonnets are quite imaginative with the turn coming at odd places. Best poem: Stunt (with a close second: The Robotroid Girlfriend).