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| Some Ether: Poems | 
 enlarge | Author: Nick Flynn
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $8.03
You Save: $5.97 (43%)
New (22) Used (11) from $8.03
Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 358039
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 64
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.4
ISBN: 1555973035
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.6
EAN: 9781555973032
ASIN: 1555973035
Publication Date: May 1, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New Book! Delivered direct from our US warehouse in 3-6 days (Expedited) or 10-14 days (Standard). Expedited shipping recommended for speedy delivery. Over 1 million satisfied customers.
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Product Description
Winner of a "Discovery"/The Nation Award
Winner of the 1999 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry
Some Ether is one of the more remarkable debut collections of poetry to appear in America in recent memory. As Mark Doty has noted, "these poems are more than testimony; in lyrics of ringing clarity and strange precision, Flynn conjures a will to survive, the buoyant motion toward love which is sometimes all that saves us. Some Ether resonates in the imagination long after the final poem; this is a startling, moving debut."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 More than a confessional January 28, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I regret having missed the opportunity to meet Nick Flynn, as he was signing books and giving a lecture about "Some Ether" at the state college where I live. Before that I had heard very little about him, and soon as I heard the word "confessional" in reference to his poetry I decided not to go. Having pored over this collection for almost a year now, I wish I could go back just to have a few words with the guy.
This is not Gen-x, rehab riddled whining; it is emotionally powerful work from a man still trying to make sense of his traumatic past through the medium of poetry, which he has such a tremendous aptitude at that the subject matter ("depressing" or not) doesn't really matter.
It is only confessional in the sense of being intensely private; his mother's suicide and the alcoholism of his father have become shattered mirrors which he tries to reassemble in order to gain a coherent sense of self. Right from the first poem it would be impossible not to empathize with his plight or turn away: "At the end there were straws/in her glove compartment/I'd split them open to taste the familiar bitter residue/near the end
I ate all her Percodans/hungry to know how far they could take me/A bottle of red wine each night moved her along as she wrote/"I feel too much", again and again/You asked how and I said, Suicide, and you asked/how and I said, An overdose, and then she shot herself/and your eyes filled with wonder/so I added/In the chest, so you wouldn't think/her face was gone/and it mattered/somehow/that you knew this. . ."
Flynn manages to make some sense of his horrific childhood in his later poetry, but "Some Ether" is more a masterful exorcism of personal demons. This is not "Young and Depressed In America" or anything like the self pitying trash that lines the bookshelves these days. Flynn does not ask for undue entitlement, only that we listen.
Great confessional poems January 20, 2005
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This may be considered a bias review since I had a class under Nick Flynn's wing, but unlike my other professors, his poetry is deeply resounding and touching. From the reviews I read, it's disappointing that people think his poetry suffers because it doesn't play with the form or offer anything new. Even if he is "confined," he does it very well. The poem Bag of Mice is just simply beautiful. Its brevity, emotion, and honesty should be appreciated. While the mother-complex may tire some readers, there are others such as Cartoon Physics and No Map that kept me interested. I recommend all beginning poets should study Flynn's book and appreciate good poetry.
 in defense December 9, 2003
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
It's a relatively easy thing to write from a safe and ironic distance about nothing; practically anyone can do it, as the MFA-mills have proven. It's much riskier (and potentially far more rewarding) to write with genuine feeling about the Big Bad, pounding on the door with its meat hook. Flynn isn't perfect--some of these poems jump the tracks at the crucial moment--but he ought to get points for having something difficult and meaningful to say, and mostly figuring out how to say it--unlike so many of the callow, academic-hearted poseurs that pretend to write poetry these days. We've forgotten, somehow, that mere cleverness is its own form of self-indulgence. Ironic detachment won't comfort us much in hard times; there are a few poems in this collection that might.
A Great Book August 22, 2003
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I read most of the first books of poetry that come out, but this is the one I keep coming back to. I think it's fairly easily the best first book in the last ten years or so. Some dislike it, I know, because it's autobiographical, sincere and a times maybe a bit sentimental--things many first book poets, indoctrinated in a fear of "subjectivity" by their MFA programs and the editorial preferences of magazines edited by Iowa/New York hipsters, would rather die than risk being accused of. So this isn't yet another book striving to be linguistically or philosophically experimental (whether or not after Stein, Pound, Ashbery and the other modernists and postmodernists such writing is actually hopelessly derivative) or which guards its emotions like a Catholic school girl guards her virginity. This is simply work which sooner or later is going to crowd most everybody else off the table.
Stirred April 21, 2003
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I read this book as one of the several assigned to me before a writing conference. I'm not really a fan of poetry. Often time, I feel like the words only mean something to the poet and not to the actual audience. I generally don't like to not be able to figure something out no matter how hard I try. But in earnest, I truly enjoyed Some Ether, by Nick Flynn. For some reason, the words move me, and this does not happen very often with other people's writing. I feel like this is Flynn's soul on page. The words hum in my mind. The poems are beautiful and extremely thoughtful. I'm glad to have read this book, I hope Nick turns out much more fantastic work, and I wish him the best forever and always.
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