In a dazzling array of forms, moods, and subjects, the poems in Matthew Roth's Rains Rain explore the absurd and tender boundaries that separate desire and disaster. Again and again, the speakers in these poems discover the moment when control gives way to chaos, when the light of knowledge fails and one is left to make fateful decisions in the dark. By turns humorous, poignant, and sharply philosophical, Roth's poems blend a keen-eyed honesty with disarming imaginative leaps. These poems resonate, their presence reverberating in the wake of the silence they leave behind.