The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands: Poems
Now in paperback, the latest poetry by Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and The Ticking Is the Bomb

The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands begins as a meditation on love and the body but soon breaks down into a collage of voices culled from media reports, childhood memories, testimonies from Abu Ghraib detainees, passages from documentary films, overheard conversations, and scraps of poems and song, only to reassemble with a gathering sonic force. It's as if all the noise that fills our days were a storm, yet at the center is a quiet place, but to get there you must first pass through the storm, with eyes wide open, singing. Each poem becomes a hallucinatory, shifting experience, through jump cut, lyric persuasion, and deadpan utterance. This is an emotional, resilient response to some of the essential issues of our day by Nick Flynn, one of America's riskiest and most innovative writers.

"An unflinching attempt to use poetry to grapple with some of the most shameful monsters of this new century—the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib and the terrible cost war enacts on everyone caught up in it, both civilians and soldiers." —The Rumpus

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The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands: Poems
Now in paperback, the latest poetry by Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and The Ticking Is the Bomb

The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands begins as a meditation on love and the body but soon breaks down into a collage of voices culled from media reports, childhood memories, testimonies from Abu Ghraib detainees, passages from documentary films, overheard conversations, and scraps of poems and song, only to reassemble with a gathering sonic force. It's as if all the noise that fills our days were a storm, yet at the center is a quiet place, but to get there you must first pass through the storm, with eyes wide open, singing. Each poem becomes a hallucinatory, shifting experience, through jump cut, lyric persuasion, and deadpan utterance. This is an emotional, resilient response to some of the essential issues of our day by Nick Flynn, one of America's riskiest and most innovative writers.

"An unflinching attempt to use poetry to grapple with some of the most shameful monsters of this new century—the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib and the terrible cost war enacts on everyone caught up in it, both civilians and soldiers." —The Rumpus

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The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands: Poems

The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands: Poems

by Nick Flynn
The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands: Poems

The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands: Poems

by Nick Flynn

Paperback(Reprint)

$15.00 
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Overview

Now in paperback, the latest poetry by Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and The Ticking Is the Bomb

The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands begins as a meditation on love and the body but soon breaks down into a collage of voices culled from media reports, childhood memories, testimonies from Abu Ghraib detainees, passages from documentary films, overheard conversations, and scraps of poems and song, only to reassemble with a gathering sonic force. It's as if all the noise that fills our days were a storm, yet at the center is a quiet place, but to get there you must first pass through the storm, with eyes wide open, singing. Each poem becomes a hallucinatory, shifting experience, through jump cut, lyric persuasion, and deadpan utterance. This is an emotional, resilient response to some of the essential issues of our day by Nick Flynn, one of America's riskiest and most innovative writers.

"An unflinching attempt to use poetry to grapple with some of the most shameful monsters of this new century—the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib and the terrible cost war enacts on everyone caught up in it, both civilians and soldiers." —The Rumpus


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781555976330
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Publication date: 01/08/2013
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 104
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

NICK FLYNN's work—which includes Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Memoir, and the poetry collections Blind Huber and Some Ether—has been translated into thirteen languages.

Table of Contents

1

haiku (failed) 7

fire 8

false prophet 20

jesus knew 21

air 23

imagination 32

2

greetings, friend (minotaur) 35

kedge 36

the baffled king composing hallelujah 38

earth 39

hello, birdy 45

forgetting something 46

almost song 47

self-exam (my body is a cage) 49

water 51

invasion of the body snatchers 60

oh here 61

3

seven testimonies (redacted) 65

dear lady of perpetual something 72

e. corpse 75

pulse (hidden bird) 77

saudade 78

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