The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands : : Poems

Locations
Call Number: 811.6 Fl
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	811.6 Fl	4-week checkout	On Shelf

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summary submitted by manz on December 28, 2012, 12:46pm SUMMARY:
"In his third collection (after Some Ether), poet and memoirist Flynn succeeds at the nearly impossible task of writing political poetry about current events. In homage to Walt Whitman, another wartime poet, many poems address an unseen captain, "capt'n this morning six were found hanging/ in a room made completely of air." The poems are many-layered: themes of air, water, earth, and fire appear throughout the collection, as do specific lines. Flynn offers intriguing narratives, too: one tells of a latchkey boy who either sets his house or a young girl on fire after school one day. Or perhaps both: "the boy stood in the hot-hot room/ stammering I did stammering, I did stammering. /everything you say I did/ I did." In the series about Abu Ghraib, the writing becomes disconnected and occasionally difficult to follow: "My eyesight is years/ See up yes did this." But voice remains paramount and compelling as in this love poem: "let's hold each other/ ceaselessly/ your bed a box cut out of the sky." VERDICT A finely crafted collection that gives testimony to moral outrage and celebrates being human; not to be missed. [See Prepub Alert, 11/1/10.]-Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC."