Low
By Nick Flynn
Graywolf Press, November 7, 2023
Since
day one there’s always been
two of me—the one
with eyes closed & the one
trying to keep the other alive. One
dumbstruck, the other
all in.
—from “Dumbstruck”
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.
Selected Praise
“Beautifully crafted poems from the (broken) heart; the masterly Flynn doesn’t drag us into the depths but rises to meet us.”—Library Journal, on I Will Destroy You
“Nick Flynn’s poems are gritty and emotional, grim and loving, funny and also about death and addiction and grief. I can’t wait to sleep with this volume under my pillow.”—Literary Hub, on I Will Destroy You
“Each poem is a compelling dynamic where language is shattered and rebuilt to convey truths that are haunting and beautiful. Nobody bends a lyric the way Flynn does to break the heart.”—Washington Independent Review of Books, on I Will Destroy You
About the Author
Nick Flynn is the author of four poetry books, including I Will Destroy You, My Feelings, and Some Ether, which won the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, and three memoirs, including Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. He teaches at the University of Houston and lives in New York.