We report the preparation of crystalline ZnO nanorods using poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) as the capping molecule. The ZnO nanorods were found to be in a new crystalline phase. The optical absorption spectrum shows a characteristic edge but with a long tail towards the red. The near-band-edge emission was observed only at temperatures below 50 K. The photoluminescence is shown to follow a biexponential decay kinetics with rather short lifetimes (~2 and ~0.3 ns, respectively).