Blind Huber: Poems [Paperback]

Nick Flynn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2002

Award-winning poet Nick Flynn takes readers into the dangerous and irresistible center of the hive

I sit in a body & think of a body, I picture
Burnens' hands, my words
make them move. I say, plunge them into the hive,
& his hands go in.
—from "Blind Huber"

Blindness does not deter François Huber—the eighteenth-century beekeeper—in his quest to learn about bees through their behavior. Through an odd, but productive arrangement, Huber's assistant Burnens becomes his eyes, his narrator as he goes about his work. In Nick Flynn's extraordinary new collection, Huber and Burnens speak and so do the bees. The strongest virgin waits silently to kill the other virgins; drones are "made of waiting"; the swarm attempts to protect the queen. It is a cruel existence. Everyone sacrifices for the sweet honey, except the human hand that harvests it all in a single afternoon.

Blind Huber is about the body, love, and devotion and also about the limits of what can be known and what will forever be unknown. Nick Flynn's bees and keepers—sometimes in a state of magnificent pollen-drunk dizziness—view the world from a striking and daring perspective.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nick Flynn's 1999 debut, Some Ether, was a compelling piece of post- confessionalism, and a runaway success: Flynn depicted his suicidal mother, his vagabond father, and his own grownup torments, phrase by short, sophisticated phrase. This follow-up forsakes Flynn's own biography for that of the blind 18th-century beekeeper Francois Huber, who-with his assistant Burnens-discovered the outlines of what we now know about honeybees. The compact and compelling lyric sequence imagines Huber, Burnens, and the bees themselves as they reveal their nature and their behavior over Huber's long and patient life. Component poems-all in terse and deft free verse-take full advantage of Flynn's real knowledge of apiculture, and of his talent for punchy, self-contained lines. "We pollinate the fields," the bees say in "Queen," "because we are the fields."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Flynn's impressive first collection (Some Ether) was overly autobiographical, tempered by a close attention to craft. This new collection, based loosely on the life of Fran‡ois Huber, a blind, 18th-century beekeeper, strays far from the Self. Yet what unites these two collections is the sense of desperation, the crazed need, the determination to prevail. The majority of poems are written from the bees' perspective, yet they seem neither irrelevant nor simplistic. In fact, this approach yields wisdom and insights, as in "Queen": "You take our honey/ because we let you. We pollinate the fields// because we are the fields." These poems are tight, with not a word wasted; objectivist at their root, they borrow imagery from Christianity, Islam, science, and mythology to create almost surreal philosophical concoctions that seem to have belonged together all along. While Flynn is unquestionably one of the most interesting poets writing today, and avid poetry readers should be lining up for this book, it will most likely confuse more casual readers. Recommended, therefore, for larger poetry collections.
Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (October 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555973736
• ISBN-13: 978-1555973735
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #359,157 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Nick Flynn is the award-winning author of Some Ether, Blind Huber, The Ticking is the Bomb and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. He divides his time between Texas, where he teaches at the University of Houston, and Brooklyn, New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I miss this book., September 13, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Blind Huber: Poems (Paperback)

Someone borrowed it and didn't return it. So I'm here buying a second copy and was surprised to read bad customer reviews. Nick's fine observations and sensitive explorations of life in the hive are very satisfying to me. What vital person isn't interested in bees or ants, even if only as analogies of us?

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a rush- amazing, October 9, 2004

By 

L. R. Gardiner (MA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blind Huber: Poems (Paperback)

I read this small book with excitement growing to fierce joy.
I'd expected something dreamy and pastoral, or remote, but the charged language took me straight to the frontlines of a fight for existence, love, comprehension. Some of the compact, measured poems felt dangerous, like standing in the middle of a freeway, feeling the heat of traffic speeding past, or leaning almost too far over a cliff, and random thrills of phrases and images came back to my mind, later. Others are more observation, less breathless, but with a focussed fascination. The poems have the structural strength of a well-built old stone wall, which is great, because the perspective zooms wildly in and out, and the whole thing could have just been loopy in lesser hands. The poems build but don't rely on each other, they're broad, and don't spoil themselves for rereading. The language is very physical, accessible, timeless, and sounds as well out loud as read silently. I'm getting a couple more copies, the ones I had were gathered up by curious friends.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry as guidebook, February 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Blind Huber: Poems (Paperback)

Nick Flynn's "Blind Huber" masterfully, with patience and discipline, achieves what few other poets are able to do: the book-length, extended metaphor. Not since Louise Gluck's "The Wild Iris" have I sunk so deeply into a vision of the world conjured through sustained imagery. Here, as he fashions a series of poems from the perspective of bee-keepers, worker bees, foragers, and the Queen herself, Flynn builds a linguistic world around the reader like a hive.