Re-reading Matthew Rohrer's The Others

[PAID content] Little room, enormous city...

Matthew Rohrer. The Others. Wave Books, 2017. 229 pp.

It’s time for a cheeky little bonus letter on a poet whose work I enjoy. Matthew Rohrer is a contemporary bard of Brooklyn and Manhattan, whose work tends to be plain, imaginative, and never ever sweaty. (I started reading his work because I was looking for more work like James Tate’s.)

His poem about the little Mars rover is a crowd favorite. I remember he once said in an interview that he drafts everything in a tiny notebook while outside, since he cannot stand to have the writing process resemble an office job.

But this letter will cover not one of his many poetry collections but what’s billed as a novel in verse with the ghostly title The Others.