All posts tagged: Matthew Rohrer

Matthew Rohrer: “Hey There, Mr. Blue”

The third issue of Poetry Northwest, our special Music Issue, features prose by poets on the subject of music. This month we preview this Spring-Summer 2007 (v2.n1) special issue with an online exclusive: poet Matthew Rohrer writing about his all-time favorite band, Electric Light Orchestra. Rohrer has been listening to ELO since 1978, even through the dark times, when it was decidedly uncool. Hey There, Mr. Blue It was over a hundred degrees outside because it was Oklahoma, but inside our house it was perfectly cool, sometimes too cool, like something out of the future. And everyone’s house was this cool, and everything else was too, so essentially one moved through town (only when necessary) in an air-conditioned car, from chilly house to chilly movie theater to chilly grocery store. We might as well have been living on a moon colony because we needed advanced technology just to survive. Which I only mention because that day when I stood in the living room with the stereo—my parents’ stereo, the one made to look like wood—and …