Low: Poems

(Paperback)

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Low explores the jaggedness of memory and what is salvageable when the past is broken by loss, violence, and trauma. Punctuating Nick Flynn's signature lyric poems are prose pieces and sequences, veering toward essays, including "Notes on a Calendar Found in a Stranger's Apartment," a truly strange experience of cataloging a deceased neighbor's belongings and how quickly they become worthless; "Notes on Thorns & Blood," a study of time and wounds; and "Notes on a Year of Corona," a loose sonnet crown about the early stages of the pandemic and the unrest after racist police violence. Despite its existential reverberations, Low is a celebration of desire in all its forms-the desire for home, the desire to be held, the desire for people to be kind to one another, the desire to understand where we are from and what we can do to make the best of that. But how do we create a home, these poems ask, in a world of satellites and atom bombs and algorithms, those things designed to dehumanize and reduce us To get low is to reconnect with the earth, to engage with the emotional state of the planet, to remember that "the cure all along grows beside us." Flynn's collection is a prismatic, even prophetic, experience, with new complexity and ardor at every turn.

Reviews

"This collection is a search for hope during a lifetime of longing. Flynn's realities take the mundane and turn everyday objects into tokens of unexpected relief; 'this is what we deal with--this is what could make me happy.'"--Garrett Ashley, Bridge Eight

"I'm always interested in reading a new collection from Nick Flynn; this one 'explores the jaggedness of memory and what is salvageable when the past is broken by loss, violence, and trauma' and features not only poems but essayish prose pieces. Can't wait to dive in."--Literary Hub

"Low by Nick Flynn investigates memory, loss, violence, trauma, and home in prose pieces, lyric sequences, and loose sonnet crowns."--Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Nick Flynn is the author of five previous poetry books, including I Will Destroy You and Some Ether, winner of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, and four memoirs, including Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. He lives in Brooklyn.