The Others

This novel-in-verse by Rohrer, a National Poetry Series winner whose most recent title was Destroyer and Preserver (he is also collaborated with Wave editor in chief Joshua Beckman on multiple projects, including 2002's Nice Hat. Thanks) centers on an ineffectual publishing company employee who consumes words for a living, including the constant working-class, shut-up-and-do-it advice from his wife and father that repeats in his head. As this book begins, the protagonist is opening Confessions of the Truly High, "a Victorian-era verse autobiography." Later, he sneaks into a church to read The Others, a work roughly about ghosts, and later still he dips into L'Enchanteur, a French text about altered states, and so on. Essentially, Rohrer's newest is a book of narratives about narratives. A source of great confusion is the poet's decision to call this a novel-in-verse when in fact it seems more like prose hacked into arbitrary lines (a pitfall the poet James Wright warned against years ago), so unlike the late David Rakoff's skillfully forged poem-novel Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish.