Some Ether : Poems

Rating:
Summary: A Fine Debut
Review: Having read Nick Flynn's poem "Bag of Mice" in a journal or online I couldn't wait to buy his first book. The poems in "Some Ether" deal with intense personal experiences, and I was afraid, the poems would suffer from this weight. They don't. The poems are beautiful in the sense that they are honest on the page-- by that I mean I know this is art, an artifical communication between body and soul yet the poems tell the truth of the moment they speak about. Does that make sense? I want other readers to know that these poems illustrate their world successfully because they don't wander away from it. This isn't a honesty that borders on confession or pleas for sympathy. This is a honesty that carefully draws out the painful-shocks of each event by making them into beautiful lines; lines that reimagine these moments because they were so powerfully felt that they need to be written down in order for the poems/art to continue.

Rating:
Summary: in defense
Review: I read this book as one of the several assigned to me before a writing conference. I'm not really a fan of poetry. Often time, I feel like the words only mean something to the poet and not to the actual audience. I generally don't like to not be able to figure something out no matter how hard I try. But in earnest, I truly enjoyed Some Ether, by Nick Flynn. For some reason, the words move me, and this does not happen very often with other people's writing. I feel like this is Flynn's soul on page. The words hum in my mind. The poems are beautiful and extremely thoughtful. I'm glad to have read this book, I hope Nick turns out much more fantastic work, and I wish him the best forever and always.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful lyrical narrative poems--buy it!
Review: I was going to give this book 2 stars, but then I thought, Why be nice? It was recommended to me by someone's mother and I guess I should have expected the worse from the start. It's conventional stuff. So I din't mean to criticize one's taste if that's what you're into. Just be warned that it doesn't take risks and doesn't lift your spirits or mind or anything of that good stuff.

Rating:
Summary: To deny pain is to deny life.............
Review: I'm not as a general rule crazy about poetry.I don't pretend to know much about the artform of poetry,the variations in style and what makes a great poem from a technical point of view. I do know that when I picked up this book and read the poems in it, I cried....If a poem is meant to be a collection of words which is an intensely personal expression of something in the poet's life, and which can convey to the reader some of the emotion felt by the writer, then this collection succeeds in its purpose. I take issue with the reviews which described these works as whiny and self-serving, they nothing of the sort, nor are they trite. Though the life conveyed on these pages might have been deserving of pity, Nick never asks for it. To the "reviewer" who wanted something to lift her spirits, I would suggest that she go buy some Helen Steiner Rice or a book of "Love Is.." cartoons; it's not this poet's job to make you feel warm and fuzzy about suicide and sadness....This is not a sugar-coated view of the world, but one in which pain and sorrow stand on their own and are not denied; they are large part of our human experience whether we want to face that or not. If we are ever to have the chance of getting through our pain, we need to feel it. Nick makes you feel the sadness, and that brings release, as I hope it did for him....My income is not such that I am able to spend more than an hour's wages on a book, for any reason, unless I really find some value in it. My family and I were deeply touched by the poems in this collection...(PS... A few of these reviwers might want to learn how to spell before they presume to criticize another's work!)

Rating:
Summary: Winner of the Levis Prize
Review: I'm one of the judges for the annual Levis Prize, an award given to the best first or second book of poetry submitted annually, a prize which memorializes the marvelous poet Larry Levis (you'll want to read his wonderful final book, ELEGY).

During the year leading up to the judging for this prize, a number of truly outstanding eligible books were published, and the judging was extraordinarily difficult. FROM THE BONES OUT, by Marisa de los Santos, CAROLINA GHOST WOODS by Judy Jordan, STONE SKY LIFTING by Lia Purpura, and A CRASH OF RHINOS by Paisley Kendall deserve special mention (and I highly recommend all of these books to you), along with quite a number of other genuinely enjoyable and remarkable books--it was a great year for poetry.

Out of all these accomplished publications, Nick Flynn's SOME ETHER won the prize because it is a book which moves far beyond being simply confessional, while at the same time it does tell a powerful and inescapably moving story regarding his childhood and his mother's suicide. It brilliantly makes original and unexpected use of metaphor, such as those involving a child's "cartoon" view of the world and how that is transformed in the consciousness of an adult. Poem after poem, it involves inventions and creations that are memorable. It's a consistently intelligent and particularly well-made book. It is compassionate, yet clear-eyed. If you open yourself to it, it will take you.

I recommend it highly, and I don't recommend books easily.

Gregory Donovan
Virginia Commonwealth University

Rating:
Summary: in defense
Review: It's a relatively easy thing to write from a safe and ironic distance about nothing; practically anyone can do it, as the MFA-mills have proven. It's much riskier (and potentially far more rewarding) to write with genuine feeling about the Big Bad, pounding on the door with its meat hook. Flynn isn't perfect--some of these poems jump the tracks at the crucial moment--but he ought to get points for having something difficult and meaningful to say, and mostly figuring out how to say it--unlike so many of the callow, academic-hearted poseurs that pretend to write poetry these days. We've forgotten, somehow, that mere cleverness is its own form of self-indulgence. Ironic detachment won't comfort us much in hard times; there are a few poems in this collection that might.

Rating:
Summary: Stylistically inventive & enormously moving
Review: This is quite simply, one of the best first books of poetry I've ever read. The language, in Nick Flynn's hands, becomes pure fire. In a lesser poet, these poems would smack of self pity and indulgence, but Flynn elevates them to pure art-- there is very little poetry out there that COMBINES such inventiveness with such emotional resonance. The poems are arresting and gorgeous but with an edge. An EARNED edge. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Great confessional poems
Review: This may be considered a bias review since I had a class under Nick Flynn's wing, but unlike my other professors, his poetry is deeply resounding and touching. From the reviews I read, it's disappointing that people think his poetry suffers because it doesn't play with the form or offer anything new. Even if he is "confined," he does it very well. The poem Bag of Mice is just simply beautiful. Its brevity, emotion, and honesty should be appreciated. While the mother-complex may tire some readers, there are others such as Cartoon Physics and No Map that kept me interested. I recommend all beginning poets should study Flynn's book and appreciate good poetry.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful poems which reach beyond confession
Review: When I first heard that Nick Flynn's book Some Ether was a collection of poems which dealt mostly which his mother's suicide, I decided I would probably avoid it. Yet another confessional poet writing about how awful his life has been just didn't appeal to me.

But then I looked at a copy. And immediately bought it. Because Flynn does something far more than just write about his childhood trauma -- he transforms this awful experience into a series of dry, deeply affecting meditations. It isn't unnecessarily depressing, and it certainly isn't self-pitying. These are poems which dig into the core of human experience and emotion.

Many of the poems are fragmentary or collage-like bursts of imagery, memory, reflection, dreams. A quick first reading lets you notice many beautiful or quirky lines ("I'm sick of God & his teaspoons"), but also makes you feel a bit like the reader of a collection of postcards and shopping lists sent from a psychiatric ward. It's a unique feeling. A closer reading, though, reveals the art. Reading the poems together, slowly, listening for the harmonies and discords, becomes an overwhelming experience. By the time you reach the last lines of the last poem -- "My fingers/ tangle your hair, trace/ your skull, your face so radiant// I can barely look into it." -- you have been through a full emotional journey, a sensual quest for meaning.

It's not a perfect collection, but it shouldn't be. Despite the high quality of their crafting, these poems are raw. There are gaps and crevices between them. Terrain such as this needs to be rough.