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| Blind Huber: Poems | 
enlarge | Author: Nick Flynn Publisher: Graywolf Press Category: Book
List Price: $14.00 Buy New: $8.03 You Save: $5.97 (43%)
New (10) Used (6) from $8.03
Avg. Customer Rating: 10 reviews Sales Rank: 300806
Media: Paperback Number Of Items: 1 Pages: 72 Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 5 x 0.3
ISBN: 1555973736 Dewey Decimal Number: 811.6 EAN: 9781555973735 ASIN: 1555973736
Publication Date: October 1, 2002 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Award-winning poet Nick Flynn takes readers into the dangerous and irresistible center of the hiveI sit in a body & think of a body, I pictureBurnens' hands, my wordsmake them move. I say, plunge them into the hive,& his hands go in.—from "Blind Huber"Blindness does not deter Francois Huber—the eighteenth-century beekeeper—in his quest to learn about bees through their behavior. Through an odd, but productive arrangement, Huber's assistant Burnens becomes his eyes, his narrator as he goes about his work. In Nick Flynn's extraordinary new collection, Huber and Burnens speak and so do the bees. The strongest virgin waits silently to kill the other virgins; drones are "made of waiting"; the swarm attempts to protect the queen. It is a cruel existence. Everyone sacrifices for the sweet honey, except the human hand that harvests it all in a single afternoon. Blind Huber is about the body, love, and devotion and also about the limits of what can be known and what will forever be unknown. Nick Flynn's bees and keepers—sometimes in a state of magnificent pollen-drunk dizziness—view the world from a striking and daring perspective.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
sting me, please July 26, 2007 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
okay... I discovered Nick in an anthology of "dangerous" young poets, even though some of these poets were in their 40's...(is that young, in comparison?) Anyway. I ordered this book immediately. It is a whole book...as opposed to poetry collections that are just that...collected poems. The book is loosely based on the pioneer beekeeper (who went blind). I love bees and so was already biased toward the poems. However, Nick shows such a tenderness to small details, he enters the bees world as often as Huber's, and speaks with authority as both. Drawing on this quiet art as inspiration, as well as the blind man who provided the rest of the beekeeping world with most of the knowledge they now have, Nick crafts poems that are disturbing, soft, and sometimes statements of fact dressed up in fancy garb. My favorite image from one of the poems has the bees filling up the walls of a house with honey. The owner's had to burn it to get rid of them. Nick speaks the poem from the point of view of the bees. Brilliantly crafted. Attention to detail. The details are beautiful.
in response to nick flynn: blind huber January 23, 2007 2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Nick Flynn: Blind Huber
I know you only through the mind of a blind man, and the buzzing & the buzzing overwhelming and elemental, repetition & obsession, discovery, learning, learning.
I know you only as an insect, instinctive. Drones and queens and the wax & the wax, smooth and separating. It is welcome & warning. You work, building, building.
I know you only as an assistant, medium: The eyes of a blind man, ocular assistant daring and trusting, obedience & consequence; necessary, an instrument, an instrument.
What a rush- amazing October 9, 2004 5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I read this small book with excitement growing to fierce joy. I'd expected something dreamy and pastoral, or remote, but the charged language took me straight to the frontlines of a fight for existence, love, comprehension. Some of the compact, measured poems felt dangerous, like standing in the middle of a freeway, feeling the heat of traffic speeding past, or leaning almost too far over a cliff, and random thrills of phrases and images came back to my mind, later. Others are more observation, less breathless, but with a focussed fascination. The poems have the structural strength of a well-built old stone wall, which is great, because the perspective zooms wildly in and out, and the whole thing could have just been loopy in lesser hands. The poems build but don't rely on each other, they're broad, and don't spoil themselves for rereading. The language is very physical, accessible, timeless, and sounds as well out loud as read silently. I'm getting a couple more copies, the ones I had were gathered up by curious friends.
I miss this book. September 13, 2003 9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Someone borrowed it and didn't return it. So I'm here buying a second copy and was surprised to read bad customer reviews. Nick's fine observations and sensitive explorations of life in the hive are very satisfying to me. What vital person isn't interested in bees or ants, even if only as analogies of us?
experience viewed through an alternative lens March 13, 2003 10 out of 12 found this review helpful
I think it was a wise choice for Flynn to turn from the overtly autobiographical poems of his powerful first book to a radically different project. Isn't that a strength for a poet, to be able to switch lenses, discover new ways to make meaning by shifting the formal parameters of the poem? The strangeness, beauty and ferocity of the world of bees becomes, in Flynn's hands, a platform for the investigation of human experience. What better metaphor than the hive to help us think about community and individuality, the whole and the singular? These poems are haunting, weird and alive; they reward the reader's patience and willingness to enter into their world with a remarkable intensity of feeling, and a compelling vision.
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