PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

june 2015
In his fourth poetry collection, poet and memoirist Flynn (The
Reenactments) explores appetite and grief, clarity and absurdity, in lines of
great technical skill and feeling. In Kafka, Kafkas death is echoed in the
worsening condition of the speakers father, blending impending familial
and legal considerations with the surreal: And the house, the mansion he/
grew up in, soon a lawyer will pass// a key across a walnut desk, but even
this/ lawyer will not be able to tell me where this// mansion is. While
several of the poems address family deaths, Flynn equally interrogates the
present as it unfolds, full of as-yet uncertain significances. In Father,
Insect the speakers daughter contemplates her father prior to fatherhood,
which leads the speaker to wonder, When/ did want become more// than
hunger, when// did need become more/ than shadow? Biblical references
in what is an intimate collection offer a sense of shared narrative and
searching: Saul was a sailor on the boat to Damascus/ He did not know
what he was/ Paul turned to a voice it rose up from the waves/ It chained
his boat to the darkness. Though there is grief and loss in Flynns poems,
there is comfort in lifes continuity, and the unknowing is rich with
possibility.