Destroyer and Preserver

By Matthew Rohrer Description Reviews The governance of fear will be checked by love. Griffin Poetry Prize finalist Matthew Rohrer illuminates the modern plight: how to be a thoughtful citizen, parent, and person as the landscape of terror and history worms its way into our everyday existence. Unnervingly humorous, casual, and tender, Rohrer’s poems help us investigate our lives as he investigates his—openly and with a generous presence. Though raggedly honest in his hopelessness, [Rohrer] nonetheless strives, by technical means, to mend what is broken...his choicest songs uniquely navigate the competing commitments of solitude and community and enact the difficulties and pleasures of creating home in oneself and in the world.Joshua Wilson, Boston ReviewDestroyer and Preserver struggles heroically with the need for concentration & revelation against a field of distraction & shattered perceptions. Rohrer has written with such tender affection–for people, for places, fo