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boureemusique's review
4.0
The poems in this book are about bees. It is a sensual, beautiful book whose only possible flaw is that it is too pretty.
dan1066's review
4.0
What would you do inside me?
You would be utterly
lost, labyrinthine
comb, each corridor identical, a
funhouse, there, a bridge, worker
knit to worker, a span
you can’t cross.
Hive
Referencing the biography and work of the blind melittologist Francoise Huber, Nick Flynn’s Blind Huber is a four-part poem about bees. I expected a poetic work with the spirit of Lewis Thomas, someone who would construct beautiful, memorable verse articulating universal truths culled from the observation of bees. Rather, Flynn consulted Wikipedia, maybe a biography and a couple of letters by Huber, and wrote this quartet. There’s no esoteric scholarship employed, no specific vocabulary regarding bees where you have to consult scholarly journals to fully understand a metaphor. Flynn is not out to versify apicology; rather, he examines communication and community. In the end, Blind Huber provides universal truths culled from the observation of bees, but the verse itself is not as beautiful as I had hoped.
Each short poem is part of the whole. While none of the individual poems really stand out, collectively they create a beguiling scheme. That’s right: like a bee hive, the product is in the collective labor of multiple units. The continual narratives of worker bees, Queen bees, Huber and his assistant Burnens propel the verse forward; the interplay between them yields rich insight into what is means to be part of a community, what is means to investigate a complex world with senses other than sight.
I was frustrated during my initial reading because the poetry itself—the actual arrangement of lines on the page—seemed rather simplistic and, at times, even insipid. Many of the narratives seemed too abstract and lacked emotional resonance. Reflecting and rereading it for this commentary after the images of the poem incubated in my mind, however, the merits of this work became more apparent and I changed my opinion. On my second tour, I enjoyed Flynn’s funhouse more, moving from comb to comb while Blind Huber and Burnens try to understand this alien existence. While not the best collection of poems I have ever read, it’s certainly one of the most thoughtful.
You would be utterly
lost, labyrinthine
comb, each corridor identical, a
funhouse, there, a bridge, worker
knit to worker, a span
you can’t cross.
Hive
Referencing the biography and work of the blind melittologist Francoise Huber, Nick Flynn’s Blind Huber is a four-part poem about bees. I expected a poetic work with the spirit of Lewis Thomas, someone who would construct beautiful, memorable verse articulating universal truths culled from the observation of bees. Rather, Flynn consulted Wikipedia, maybe a biography and a couple of letters by Huber, and wrote this quartet. There’s no esoteric scholarship employed, no specific vocabulary regarding bees where you have to consult scholarly journals to fully understand a metaphor. Flynn is not out to versify apicology; rather, he examines communication and community. In the end, Blind Huber provides universal truths culled from the observation of bees, but the verse itself is not as beautiful as I had hoped.
Each short poem is part of the whole. While none of the individual poems really stand out, collectively they create a beguiling scheme. That’s right: like a bee hive, the product is in the collective labor of multiple units. The continual narratives of worker bees, Queen bees, Huber and his assistant Burnens propel the verse forward; the interplay between them yields rich insight into what is means to be part of a community, what is means to investigate a complex world with senses other than sight.
I was frustrated during my initial reading because the poetry itself—the actual arrangement of lines on the page—seemed rather simplistic and, at times, even insipid. Many of the narratives seemed too abstract and lacked emotional resonance. Reflecting and rereading it for this commentary after the images of the poem incubated in my mind, however, the merits of this work became more apparent and I changed my opinion. On my second tour, I enjoyed Flynn’s funhouse more, moving from comb to comb while Blind Huber and Burnens try to understand this alien existence. While not the best collection of poems I have ever read, it’s certainly one of the most thoughtful.
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