Nice Hat. Thanks.
By Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer
ISBN# 9780972348706 (5x7 64pp, paperback)
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Nice Hat. Thanks....the reprint! Hand-stamped by Joshua Beckman; each cover is unique.
Nice Hat. Thanks. is an innovative book based on the recorded improvised poetic collaborations between two award-winning poets, Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer. Comprised of poems ranging from a few words to several pages, Nice Hat. Thanks. is a collection of transcriptions of these clever, often funny, and stylistically subtle collaborations between two innovative poetic voices engaged in serious play. Live public performances of these collaborations have met with excitement and enthusiasm across the country.
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Nice Hat. Thanks. gives everything away on the front cover. The title (one of the book’s two-line poems), is exactly right—witty, unexpected, and unpretentious. The reader who goes in expecting more of the same will not be disappointed. ... The poems within are not composed or crafted; they emerge—in this case, from the poets’ improvisational poetic collaborations...Instead of trying to create an illusion of slick uniformity, the authors allow their choppy lines and abrupt shifts of meaning to govern the book’s aesthetic, and the result is delightful.
Monique van den Berg, Bookslut
When Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer read together at the St. George Poetry Festival in September [2002], they asked the audience to provide topics for improvised poems. Amid anticipatory silence that crackled with palpable energy, they took turns meting out a single word (or line, according to the chosen constraint) into the microphone. Even if some of the impromptu poems missed the mark, the experiment provided a valuable template by which to read their similarly composed book, Nice Hat. Thanks.—a silence in which words flail, becoming urgent and surprisingly funny. . . . Overall, their method is winning because it is manipulated with dexterity and aplomb by two nimble poets with a spry sense of humor and a refreshing willingness to set aside their artistic egos. There is little likeness between the collaborative poems and the work Beckman and Rohrer have published separately. I believe the authors when they write, “Our method turned us into another guy.”
Jen Bervin, Rain Taxi
It's perfect for summer -- humorous, fleet, leaving you with positive impressions like a day at the beach.
Brad Liening, Indigest -
Joshua Beckman was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of many books, including The Lives of the Poems and 3 Talks (Wave Books, forthcoming 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, 2008) 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 Others (forthcoming from Wave Books, 2017), 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.
