Flourish

by Dora Malech

Overview

In Flourish, multiple meanings catch light—as the leaves of growing things might, or the facets of cut gemstones, or a signal mirror flashing in distress. These poems explore themes of thriving, growth, innovation, and survival, while immersing the reader in the pleasures of language itself—the “flourish” of linguistic gesture, play, form, turn, and adornment.
Here, the lens zooms in and out to micro and macro levels, asking us to see the familiar with new eyes. The collection engages with the materials of the worlds we inhabit—natural worlds and those of our own making—and a full spectrum of poetry’s own materials, building worlds of words and illuminating the shadowed terrain of our interior landscapes as well.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780887486555
Publisher:	Carnegie-Mellon University Press
Publication date:	02/18/2020
Series:	Carnegie Mellon University Press Poetry Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Dora Malech is assistant professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of three books of poetry. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, the Best American Poetry, and numerous other publications. She lives in Baltimore.

Table of Contents

Party Games 11

Country Songs 13

Lake Roland Park 14

Uprising 15

America: That Feeling When 16

Unconditional 18

I Now Pronounce You 19

Late Lullaby 22

"Thousands are gathered outside the interior ministry …" 23

Flight Map 24

Personal Device 25

Progress 29

Nominal Nocturne 31

Aubade 32

The Aquarium 33

Echo 35

Euscorpius italicus 37

Peter Piper Speaks and Spells 38

Little Offer 40

Working Order 41

Running in Autumn 43

Rats 44

Catoctin Mountain Park 46

Maximum Security 48

Minerals, Mine 50

With Distinction(s) 52

Come Again 55

Each year 57

The Gods Before Me 58

Forced Perspective 59

Still Life 61

To the You of Ten Years Ago, Now 62

Humility & Co. 63

Caldo 64

Dear Reader- 67

'The Garden of Eloquence 68

Portami il girasole … 70

Parade 71

For Eleza 75

Neighborhood Watch 77

Notes Toward a Thank-You 79

Wind and Flags 81

As I gather 83

Gratitude 87

On the fence 88

Four Weeks 89

Flourish 90

Editorial Reviews

Malech wields an elegant knife. A reader wowed by her brilliant imagery might overlook the terror in a line like, ‘Though his eyes are open, the dead man is not all that moved by the stars.’ These poems examine the violence about us. Malech’s landscapes are full of ‘bloody lullabies,’ ‘sweet asylum,’ ‘lexical kaleidoscopes,’ and sentences ‘bursting at as if all else / were seams, field sown to open, / reveling in its unraveling.’ Flourish is dazzling.

Terrance Hayes

Announcing what’s most at stake in its own title, Flourish is about the ardent encounters that irradiate a life into meaning. In poems about the textures of the world, the currents of thought and feeling within the self, and the intricate amplitude of language itself.

Rick Barot

"Dora Malech’s poetry collection Flourish is a 'floodlit stage' that exposes the nuances of the human experience, the politics that seep into every corner of our lives, and the power of language to be fractured and sewn back together to create newness."

The Sundress Blog

What a brilliant book. Page after page one finds lines one wants to write down. Here is poetry that is unafraid to see us clearly. In this time of injustice, what can one poet do? How can that one ‘pair of wings on fire’ lift us out of our predicament? Open this book to find out. Find that there is, after all, what this poet calls this ‘pesky tenderness.’ Open this book and see for yourself how ‘gratitude that one expends expands.’ This is real poetry, friends.

Ilya Kaminsky