From Publishers Weekly
A troubled mother with a drug problem who ultimately commits suicide, her menacing boyfriends, and a wayward father populateAand come to dominateAFlynn's debut. In these 48 free verse narratives and lyrics framing a plain American vernacular, memory can seem almost a compulsion: "I don't want// to remember her/ reaching up for a kiss, or the television// pouring its blue bodies into her bedroom." Though many of the poems' recollections are considerably starker than these, Flynn never becomes overly graphic or macabre with this potentially overwhelming material, skirting unbridled confessionalism or mawkish sentimentality through quick successions of imagery. The drawback in Flynn's approach, however, is that it limits the poems to dramatization and description, and provides little room for more complex characterizations or insights about the small-scale tragedies depicted. Charged figurative language does make its way in, however, sometimes touched with surrealism. Such dazzling surface effects sometimes come off as mannered and opportunistic, as in a stylized dramatic monologue of the mother handling her gun, "the hard O of its mouth/ made of waiting, each bullet/ & its soft hood of lead. Braced// solid against my thigh, I'd feed it/ with my free hand, my robe open// as if nursing, practicing/ my hour of lead, my letting go." Flynn occasionally departs from such dramas, but the dark tone and themes of loss and impermanence persist through recurrent references to disastersAplane crashes, shipwrecks, floodsAthat can't quite expand the range of the poems. This first collection nevertheless presents an earnest sounding out of painful losses, and an honest feeling out of survival and selfhood. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This first collection is almost frightening in its honesty and reckless passion. Flynn writes tough, sad poetry that addresses a difficult childhood and a mother's suicide with unblinking faith that simply saying one's pain can tether it. There are droplets of bright, beautiful language throughout, as when "ghost stars convincingly stutter." Finally, one agrees with the author when he avows "infused with grace, by own voice/ floods the darkness."
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
