Customer Reviews

Nice Hat. Thanks.

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

These guys are lifting the face of American poetry with their word by word improvised collaborations ... funny, direct, mysterious, imaginative, unpredictable yet somehow always just right, these poems (from two-liners all the way up to two-pagers) will help you remember why poetry is necessary, not to mention fun. Plus to see them write new collaborations live (they're in the middle of a cross-country tour right now) is to see the pleasure of writing poetry -- letting language loose and watching it out of the corner of your ear until it finds you -- revealed ... anyone can do it, and everyone will. Pure generous poetry for everyone.

clever, observant, right on target
the only thing better than reading their stuff is seeing them come up with it live

It seems the readers are staunchly divided; you'll either like this book or hate it. If you read it as a bout of light reading and don't dig too deeply for meaning or what have you, you will enjoy it for the simple play of language, for all of the words bumping each other pleasantly. If you're looking for wit and meaning, I'd stick with the pithier two- or three-lined poems. The longer ones strike me as a sort of absurdist mad-lib, which was a plus in my book, but may not be in yours. Borrow a copy first, to test it out.

This book is, well. It's just amazing. It makes me want to roll down my windows in the rain, shout obscenities from the card catalog and call Merriam Webster on a weekday during peak hours to say, "Make room for these two because language just got even more stellar." Very lovely indeed.

A witty little book. I laughed a lot while reading it. Sometimes my jaw dropped at the images in these tiny poems. I really love it because its different than any other book of poems I've ever seen. Highly recommended for anyone that isn't uptight.

Matthew Rohrer and Joshua Beckman are, separately, two of my favorite poets. Put together, they are three of my favorite poets. The awareness and playfulness of "Nice Hat. Thanks." makes for great poetry and great fun. I give it my highest recommendation, along with all their other books.

Matthew Rohrer and Joshua Beckman are, separately, two of my favorite poets. Put together, they are three of my favorite poets. The awareness and playfulness of "Nice Hat. Thanks." makes for great poetry and great fun. I give it my highest recommendation, along with all their other books.

This isn't poetry. It's mindless. It's narcissistic. It's not even clever. But it sure does think it is.

What kind of narcissism and boredom leads to publishing a book of lazy spontaneous poetry-slam style performance poems? Especially when they're all based on a tediously repeated formula? These poems are a silly gimmick, a campfire game really, and are trite and trivial beyond belief--clear evidence of the creative nonexistence of these two "poets."