Fragments Found Inside Me (A Book Review)

Some Ether by Nick Flynn A

Some Ether is Nick Flynn's debut collection of poetry, winner of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award (1999), and an astounding work of beauty wrapped in a ball of pain.

Flynn takes us on a journey through his childhood- divorce parents, a troubled mother, strange men, and his mother's suicide. Pretty dark stuff, but written with a sense of enlightenment. The way he recalls these memories is so poetic and honest, it's what I hope to achieve every time I write but I'm nowhere near as graceful.

After I read the first poem in this collection, Bag of Mice, I was hooked. Check it out...

I dreamt your suicide note
was scrawled in pencil on a brown paperbag,
& in the bag were six baby mice. The bag
opened into darkness,
smoldering
from the top down. The mice,
huddled at the bottom, scurried the bag
across a shorn field. I stood over it
& as the burning reached each carbon letter
of what you'd written
your voice released into the night
like a song, & the mice
grew wilder.