Surrounded by Friends - Paperback
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About Surrounded by Friends
Matthew Rohrer's seventh poetry collection explores the connections between friends, family, and the everyday moments that shape our lives. These poems embrace friendships with the living, the dead, and even the inanimate, finding meaning in the ordinary distractions of daily existence.
"Rohrer's frequently beautiful, brief poems are rooted in specific images that initially seem unrelated--but which ultimately form a unity as meditations on how the ordinary distractions of everyday life can be seen as the source for almost everything important in life."--Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly
The collection builds through an expanding chorus of poetic voices, culminating in poems written "in collaboration" with classical masters Kobayashi Issa, Yosa Buson, Matsuo Basho, and Hafiz. The urban peoplescape serves as backdrop for these meditations on connection and solitude.
Featured Poem
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LONELIER
There is absolutely nothing lonelier
than the little Mars rover
never shutting down, digging up
rocks, so far away from Bond Street
in a light rain. I wonder
if he makes little beeps? If so
he is lonelier still. He fires a laser
into the dust. He coughs. A shiny
thing in the sand turns out to be his.
About Matthew Rohrer
Matthew Rohrer has received the Hopwood Award for poetry, a Pushcart Prize, was selected as a National Poetry Series winner by Mary Oliver, and was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. He is the co-author, with Joshua Beckman, of Nice Hat. Thanks., 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. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at NYU.
His previous works include Destroyer and Preserver (Wave Books, 2011), A Plate of Chicken (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009), Rise Up (Wave Books, 2007), A Green Light (Verse Press, 2004), Satellite (Verse Press, 2001), and A Hummock in the Malookas, selected for the National Poetry Series in 1994.
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