Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
108th out of 217 books
—
119 voters
A Green Light
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...more
Paperback, 96 pages
Published
May 1st 2004
by Wave Books
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
221)
Fantastic. Amazing. Just too good. Oh my god. It's like a mouthful of donut, sweet, fatty, and really good at two in the morning when you're walking over to your girlfriend's house from a bar in the Mission and you think that a donut would be really good right about now, but you actually don't buy a donut, you buy a bacon wrapped hotdog, and that's what this book does to you. It screws with your desires. It fills you in on the profound loneliness of human experience. I love Matthew Rohrer. This...more
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...more
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 amaz...more
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 Zac...more
Jan 21, 2008
Truong
added it
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...more
These poems grew on me overnight. Some went right over my head the first read-through, and still do, but others became more and more beautiful as they sunk in. Matthew Rohrer has a mastery over words, he just obscures a few of his images a bit too heavily some times. Still, I'm excited to come back and continue to try and crack the code.
Highlights: "Homage to Attila Joszef," "Abbot," "Dog Boy," "Hone Quarry"
Highlights: "Homage to Attila Joszef," "Abbot," "Dog Boy," "Hone Quarry"
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.
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.
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.
This is an interview Tao Lin conducted with Matthew Rohrer in 2005; I would recommend reading this book and that interview
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. Roh...more
I asked Tao Lin in the comments section of a post on HTMLGiant what book by Matt Rohrer he would recommend. He said A Green Light. It was a very good recommendation.
New things rise up from it all the time
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 . .
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.
Aug 16, 2007
Jack
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
People who have brains that like fun.
Shelves:
poetry
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.
May 20, 2013
Samantha Steadman
marked it as to-read
May 19, 2013
Tara
marked it as to-read
May 14, 2013
Ryan
marked it as to-read
May 14, 2013
j.m.c. harvey
marked it as to-read
May 13, 2013
Mike Kleine
marked it as to-read
May 13, 2013
Joel
marked it as to-read
May 13, 2013
Juan
marked it as to-read
May 13, 2013
Yehoshua Friedlander
marked it as to-read
May 13, 2013
Lee
marked it as to-read
May 13, 2013
Jules
marked it as to-read
May 12, 2013
Flat
marked it as to-read
May 11, 2013
Tami
marked it as to-read
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
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),...more
More about Matthew Rohrer...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
Jan 18, 2008 10:21am