Flourish

by Dora Malech

In Flourish , multiple meanings catch light—as the leaves of growing things might, or the facets of cut gemstones, or a signal mirror flashing in distress. These poems explore themes of thriving, growth, innovation, and survival, while immersing the reader in the pleasures of language itself—the “flourish” of linguistic gesture, play, form, turn, and adornment.
Here, the lens zooms in and out to micro and macro levels, asking us to see the familiar with new eyes. The collection engages with the materials of the worlds we inhabit—natural worlds and those of our own making—and a full spectrum of poetry’s own materials, building worlds of words and illuminating the shadowed terrain of our interior landscapes as well.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published February 18, 2020

About the author

Dora Malech is the author of four collections of poetry: Flourish (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2020), Stet (Princeton University Press, 2018), Say So (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011), and Shore Ordered Ocean (The Waywiser Press, 2009). She lives in Baltimore, where she is an assistant professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dora Malech's fourth book in ten years I dock a notch for the first half's insistent rhetoricizing, the anagrammatic play of words meant to joust a reader, keep them at distance, which I can't help but to put in relation to this poet's singular grace and generosity as a thinker and craftsperson about occasion and genre ["I Now Pronounce You" is as good an epithalamium as I know.] The book makes a case for openness and proves the case.

[Josephine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aubade; Working Order; To the You of Ten Years Ago, Now; Four Weeks; Flourish

[Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Malech plays with language like beautiful little trinkets. Also, a poem about taking a piss on the side of a highway.

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flourish is a great choice of title for this poetry collection, flourish as in music, flourish as in thriving, and it fulfills this promise to its fullest. There are linguistic fireworks, a brilliance of sound and form, undergirded by sharp observations be they comments on the everyday or witness to events historic or unfolding, nor do these poems shy away from their intellectual thrust.