Satellite

By Matthew Rohrer

• Description
• Reviews
• Bio

• It was a good day and I was about to do something important
  and good, but then I unscrewed the pen I was using...
  
  In this follow-up collection to National Poetry Series winner A Hummock in the Malookas, Rohrer’s poems play against convention, finding dark, surreal underpinnings in the seemingly innocent objects and experiences of everyday life. Direct, humorous and disquieting, Satellite demonstrates the unique sensibility of this important poet.

• Everywhere, Rohrer’s poems play against our lyric expectations as they approach familiar ideas of lyric transcendence—only to turn away and begin again. The true evidence of Rohrer’s growth as a poet, though, comes in the subtlety of the critical intelligence operating under the surface of his comic-fantastic.
  Spencer Short, Boston Review
  
  ...a shimmering constellation of images, both urban and wild, filled with unexpected shifts and twists.
  Time Out New York
  
  There are a number of younger poets producing the kind of work that may eventually renew the art. Matthew Rohrer belongs to this group of newcomers whose work is everywhere marked by originality and freshness. There is a pristine quality to his writing that wakes one up and clears the senses, promising poem after poem to remake the world.
  Harvard Review

• Matthew Rohrer is the author of The Sky Contains the Plans (Wave Books, forthcoming 2020), The Others (Wave Books, 2017), which was the winner of the 2017 Believer Book Award, Surrounded by Friends (Wave Books, 2015), Destroyer and Preserver (Wave Books, 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 at NYU. He can be reached at luminousfork@gmail.com.