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Rise and Float: Poems
Chosen by Randall Mann as a winner of the Jake Adam York Prize, Brian Tierney's Rise and Float depicts the journey of a poet working--remarkably, miraculously--to make our most profound, private wounds visible on the page.
With the "corpse of Frost" under his heel, Tierney reckons with a life that resists poetic rendition. The transgenerational impact of mental illness, a struggle with disordered eating, a father's death from cancer, the loss of loved ones to addiction and suicide--all of these compound to "month after / month" and "dream / after dream" of struck-through lines. Still, Tierney commands poetry's cathartic potential through searing images: wallpaper peeling like "wrist skin when a grater slips," a "laugh as good as a scream," pears as hard as a tumor. These poems commune with their ghosts not to overcome, but to release.
The course of Rise and Float is not straightforward. Where one poem gently confesses to "trying, these days, to believe again / in people," another concedes that "defeat / sometimes is defeat / without purpose." Look: the chair is just a chair." But therein lies the beauty of this collection: in the proximity (and occasional overlap) of these voices, we see something alluringly, openly human. Between a boy "torn open" by dogs and a suicide, "two beautiful teenagers are kissing." Between screams, something intimate--hope, however difficult it may be.
With the "corpse of Frost" under his heel, Tierney reckons with a life that resists poetic rendition. The transgenerational impact of mental illness, a struggle with disordered eating, a father's death from cancer, the loss of loved ones to addiction and suicide--all of these compound to "month after / month" and "dream / after dream" of struck-through lines. Still, Tierney commands poetry's cathartic potential through searing images: wallpaper peeling like "wrist skin when a grater slips," a "laugh as good as a scream," pears as hard as a tumor. These poems commune with their ghosts not to overcome, but to release.
The course of Rise and Float is not straightforward. Where one poem gently confesses to "trying, these days, to believe again / in people," another concedes that "defeat / sometimes is defeat / without purpose." Look: the chair is just a chair." But therein lies the beauty of this collection: in the proximity (and occasional overlap) of these voices, we see something alluringly, openly human. Between a boy "torn open" by dogs and a suicide, "two beautiful teenagers are kissing." Between screams, something intimate--hope, however difficult it may be.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
Published February 8, 2022
119 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 5, 2022
Thank you Milkweed for this gifted copy of Brian Tierney’s RISE AND FLOAT, out on February 8 🐳
God, Tierney’s poetry is exquisitely precise. RISE AND FLOAT drifts through many interconnected moments, all linked by words that grasp grief and shape them into tender forms on the page. Migraines, parental death, mental illness, eating disorders—these are all heavy topics, but Tierney embeds within these pasts and presents a love and compassion that moved me. He has an immense talent for taking seemingly ordinary scenes and refocusing the reader onto its edges of loss or details of a more sinister nature.
It’s hard to pick a favorite, but it would have to be “Migraine”—a poem that veers from the flashing blindness of a migraine down to the narrator’s father, his car shouldered, moments before he dies—and “You’re the One I Wanna Watch the Last Ships Go Down With”—which, the narrator claims, is not a love poem but an elegy, but really, what is love but another form of knowing each others’ sadnesses and loving them all the same?
God, Tierney’s poetry is exquisitely precise. RISE AND FLOAT drifts through many interconnected moments, all linked by words that grasp grief and shape them into tender forms on the page. Migraines, parental death, mental illness, eating disorders—these are all heavy topics, but Tierney embeds within these pasts and presents a love and compassion that moved me. He has an immense talent for taking seemingly ordinary scenes and refocusing the reader onto its edges of loss or details of a more sinister nature.
It’s hard to pick a favorite, but it would have to be “Migraine”—a poem that veers from the flashing blindness of a migraine down to the narrator’s father, his car shouldered, moments before he dies—and “You’re the One I Wanna Watch the Last Ships Go Down With”—which, the narrator claims, is not a love poem but an elegy, but really, what is love but another form of knowing each others’ sadnesses and loving them all the same?
February 12, 2022
"If I'm dead inside//how would I know, how/would a bulb/check its own filament."
This is, by far, one of the greatest poetry books published in the last 5 years that I have read. Tierney's specificity and sparseness of language, his LINE BREAKS, his manipulative punctuation (or lack thereof) are just some of the craft moves he uses with mastery. The subtlety with which he deals with mental illness is admirable. I love everything about this book.
This is, by far, one of the greatest poetry books published in the last 5 years that I have read. Tierney's specificity and sparseness of language, his LINE BREAKS, his manipulative punctuation (or lack thereof) are just some of the craft moves he uses with mastery. The subtlety with which he deals with mental illness is admirable. I love everything about this book.
February 16, 2022
I always feel poems should feel a little “off” on the tongue; a reworking of words and ideas. Tierney seems to go a step farther and creates sentences that take time to unwind: slow readings of words that sound a tad out of order, but make sense once really processed. I was put off a bit at the start, but admire the required slowing down of language in these poems.
July 16, 2022
A dense, cerebral, and often brilliant collection of poems about depression, grief, and the sometimes-grim work of living. The meaning of some of it may have escaped me, but the time I took to really sit with and absorb this book was incredibly well spent. Dog-eared a few favorites that I will certainly return to again and again – like "Hearses" and "You're the One I Wanna Watch the Last Ships Go Down With."
May 26, 2022
Excellent, beautiful, honest writing.
June 2, 2022
"Forgive me, again, that I write you an elegy/ where a love poem should be."
August 31, 2023
i Love nostalgia and bugs!!!!! these poems made me feel like the past is very damp and everyone needs to gossip more. Must be read in Philly accent.
May 18, 2023
Milkweed Editions make beautiful books: this is one.
“as if the inverse
of lightning, silence occurred, entrusted to the hour:
I became each minute, I became every direction at once
and fled from source and definite position”
“all thing look scintillant<
each thought a texture; otherworldly
filaments”
"Migraine"
“as if the inverse
of lightning, silence occurred, entrusted to the hour:
I became each minute, I became every direction at once
and fled from source and definite position”
“all thing look scintillant<
each thought a texture; otherworldly
filaments”
"Migraine"
May 24, 2023
I've been a Brian Tierney fan forever--this book is so intelligent, precisely phrased and deliberate in its line breaks and thinking.
December 29, 2023
some real gems in here! i love how these poems were made to be read slowly — i found something new with each reread. especially enjoyed “hearses” and “judas”
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June 18, 2024My favorites...
- Teletherapy
- Ideation
- Episode
- Polyphagia
- Migraines
"It's all right that we don't love living."
"I am never where my body is."
EXCUSE ME????
- Teletherapy
- Ideation
- Episode
- Polyphagia
- Migraines
"It's all right that we don't love living."
"I am never where my body is."
EXCUSE ME????
August 6, 2024
All I can say is that this collection of poetry was so profound. Brian truly has a beautiful way with words and nearly every poem in this book struck me so deeply that I could feel it in my bones.
October 25, 2024
Poetry
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews