Low: Poems

by Nick Flynn

Low explores the jaggedness of memory and what is salvageable when the past is broken by loss, violence, and trauma. Punctuating Nick Flynn’s signature lyric poems are prose pieces and sequences, veering toward essays, including “Notes on a Calendar Found in a Stranger’s Apartment,” a truly strange experience of cataloging a deceased neighbor’s belongings and how quickly they become worthless; “Notes on Thorns & Blood,” a study of time and wounds; and “Notes on a Year of Corona,” a loose sonnet crown about the early stages of the pandemic and the unrest after racist police violence.

Despite its existential reverberations, Low is a celebration of desire in all its forms―the desire for home, the desire to be held, the desire for people to be kind to one another, the desire to understand where we are from and what we can do to make the best of that. But how do we create a home, these poems ask, in a world of satellites and atom bombs and algorithms, those things designed to dehumanize and reduce us? To get low is to reconnect with the earth, to engage with the emotional state of the planet, to remember that “the cure all along grows beside us.” Flynn’s collection is a prismatic, even prophetic, experience, with new complexity and ardor at every turn.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published November 7, 2023

About the author

Nick Flynn is an American writer, playwright, and poet.



Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

nick flynn’s sixth collection of poetry (and thirteenth book overall), low contains 46 poems, most of which appeared originally within a variety of journals. as elsewhere across his writing, flynn can utterly pulverize with a single turn of phrase. so much of flynn’s work seems characterized by seeking/longing/yearning, regret/resignation/redemption, grief/wreckage/transmogrification — and so it is throughout much of low. flynn is one of our keenest observers of emotional nuance and his capacity for self-reflection is rivalled perhaps only by the depths of his compassion and empathy.

bikini

we grew up inside a bomb,

we tested it on an island
we’d emptied of people. in

the photograph, dwarf

warships circle a crown
rising up from the waves—we knew

what happened

to the other creatures who
lived on that island,

all of us knew. some of us
just fit into darkness,

make it whole. since

that day, a small red dot
hangs in the air, whenever

we close our eyes, wherever
we turn our heads, it’s

always there, small & red.

[Skylar Miklus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though Nick Flynn is widely published and acclaimed (for good reason), this is the first book of his that I've read. I was thoroughly impressed by the sophistication, talent, and mastery in these poems. The settings range from his childhood in poverty in New England, to covid-19 lockdown with his daughter. Themes include mortality, grief, religious anxiety, memory, trauma, and homesickness. My favorite poems were "Notes on Want" and "Pieta." Thanks to Graywolf Press for the ARC; expected publication November 7.

[Anatoly Molotkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Nothing// is ever lost, no one is ever/ unlost. Besides, it hurts to have// skin to pour a soul into." In his beautiful new collection, Nick Flynn refines his skill to a new level while serving as a canvas upon which his own thoughts are projected. A deeply moving, carefully thought out book that is painful, in the good way the best literature must be.

[Peter Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I need to do
now is help my daughter with her
homework. "Peggy rode her bike to
the farm. Mike decided to go by car.
It took Mike half an hour to get there.
Peggy made the trip in two hours.
If Mike was traveling thirty-six miles per
hour faster than Peggy, how far
is the farm?" The idea is to find out
what you don't know by looking at
what you know. Let's start by naming
what we know--everyone is trying
to get back to that farm.

[emma]

“I / want you to carry me across / the marsh & beyond the broken / houses, but I hate that I have / to ask. It makes the grass / shimmer”

[Andiver Castellanos · Rating 5 out of 5]

First read of 2024, and this did not disappoint. Will continue reading this author.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

“…Besides, it hurts to have / skin to pour a soul into.”

[Rodney Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonder book, my old friend. Love the cover.

[Chris]

This may be Flynn’s best book of poetry so far. I’ve gotten much better at reading poetry since “Some Ether”.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is language but an active consideration of the world, what people recognize about the world, how the world could be changed if we had better words for understanding what we feel is most true to that world. I took Flynn for a workshop, and he would lead each discussion asking us where bewilderment existed in the poem. And for this book, I would say Flynn’s bewilderment is a dynamic state of mind. Something that changes with age, with events in the world, with his own perspective on what brings these things together. What I liked about bewilderment leading our discussions was its indeterminateness and its tone. There is really no solving for bewilderment, there is no one emotion it evokes, and there is a language that can account for the confusion people normally expect from it.

Flynn’s book is invested in the present, like there was something about the present to make sense of, but whatever language might propose itself, sense slips away and the present is senseless. Consider, for instance, the series of creative nonfiction Flynn has written about finding his father (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City), the reception of that book, and the movie made because the reception of the book was overwhelming (The Reenactments). Consider how Flynn’s original story is added to, because each moment revisiting the original is as additive as it is descriptive or expressive. The story is his, and it’s the fortune of this story that he’s now in possession of more than he could have imagined when he started writing about it.

Tragedy has been like that for Flynn. And the role tragedy plays feels most present in this book where he observes words, their usage, their suitability for a given moment. What it means that the best language then might have necessarily changed to a different language set now. But the poem isn’t to say he had the wrong language, he needed to grow into the language he would use now. The poem is witness to language, how personal attachments to language can make some words more relevant or resonant depending on when they would be used. A rolling cognition, say. I would say the poems are about the different languages he would use, and where he has been in the world that would have encouraged or required that shift.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about life, love, his daughter, relationships, growth, loss, and hope.

from Unbroken: "As if the past were riding up to meet you / as if the past could ride a horse // as if the past were a horse wandering riderless / along a dusty road / as if the horse had never been ridden"

from Dumbstruck: "Her dress, // laced all the way up / her chest like stitches, as if // she'd been opened // & was now trapped inside / a suit of herself."

from Notes on a Monument to Ether: "If asked, / I'd tell you the apocalypse had come a couple of years earlier & now / we were all walking through the ruins. Now we were all walking in its shadows."

[Sara Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

At some point the lights will go out
& a cake will appear to be floating in
the doorway & we will begin the song.
The cake will be your favorite, held aloft
by the ones who love you & it will be
on fire, an offering, one flame for each
year you’ve been with us. Inside each
flame, millions of smaller flames, one
for each hour & before you make your
wish you will wonder if these aren’t
the candles that never go out, that
jump back to life after each breath—
some call them *tricks*, but think what
it means for the wish, that your breath,
instead of ending it, makes the flame
want to stay.

[Bonisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorites:

- Unbroken (which we got to hear Flynn read in person)
- Aztec
- Anemones
- Hive
- Satellite
- A Wall of Honey
- The Day The Earth Stood Still
- Marriage
- Notes on Corona (Year One)
- Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Our Friends Become Flowers (especially the third section)
- Krakow
- The Aboutness
- Storm

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense, full of images, and deep with emotion, these poems trace family trauma with traces of suicide, homelessness, drug abuse, loneliness, poverty, and disassociation.

[Jessica (JT) Thelen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice collection. Flynn continues to be able to take my breath away with a single turn of phrase.

[Signe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lilting and ebullient, overflowing with blood and honey and the cycles of life.

[Isaiah Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very solid work. Does a great job of analyzing the things we don't typically take into account. Has a very different and novel perspective on some commonly written-about topics too (like quarantine, fatherhood, etc). Similar to and an improvement on his earlier book I Will Destroy You.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, really.

[julian · Rating 5 out of 5]

originally i was a bit apprehensive, not too interested but nick flynn quickly pulled through like he always does. i love his poetry and writing style and this is another great, recent example of it. nick is 63, 3 years younger than my father who also grew up in the northeast, so it’s interesting to read his perspective, to see parallels, to understand more.

[Judah · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Somedays it’s as if I took everything that hides inside me & put it in the outside & now it walks beside me on a leash, broken somehow. You stop to say hi, you pretend not to notice— I’m trying to warn you.”