Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty

By Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer

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• After their Fall 2002 whirlwind tour supporting their book of collaborative poems, Nice Hat. Thanks., acclaimed poets Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer return with a collection of their finest new poems recorded live as they rambled high and low. These poems, created in furious improvisational badinage and contemplative rumination, cover such topics as hillbillies, baseball, capitalism, paradise, fruit, spy satellites, and the trials and tribulations of the American Automobile. The result is an uproarious and continually surprising audio record of two vivid imaginations working overtime in no less than 19 states.

• Beckman and Rohrer are both fine poets in their own right. They share a joyful earnestness, and aliveness to sensation, a geeky enthusiasm about the physical and emotional world. On Adventures, we can hear them piecing together their mutual thoughts; at times, the nervousness palpable in their humble, determined voices is touching.
  Time Out New York

• Joshua Beckman was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of many books, including Animal Days (Wave, 2021), The Lives of the Poems and Three Talks (Wave Books, 2018), The Inside of an Apple, Take It, Shake, Your Time Has Come, and two collaborations with Matthew Rohrer: Nice Hat. Thanks. and Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. He is editor-in-chief at Wave Books and has translated numerous works of poetry and prose, including Micrograms, by Jorge Carrera Andrade, 5 Meters of Poems (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) by Carlos Oquendo de Amat, and Poker (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004) by Tomaž Šalamun, which was a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Award. He also co-edited Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners (Wave Books, 2015). 

  Matthew Rohrer is the author of The Sky Contains the Plans (Wave Books, 2020), The Others (Wave Books, 2017), which was the winner of the 2017 Believer Book Award, Surrounded by Friends (Wave Books, 2015), Destroyer and Preserver (Wave Books, 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), 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. His first book, A Hummock in the Malookas was selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver in 1994. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at NYU. He can be reached at luminousfork@gmail.com.