Reviews of Blind Huber

"Nick Flynn has achieved something splendid here, vicariously entering Blind Huber and through him the sensuous consciousness of the hive." —Beloit Poetry Journal

"Readers can expect to be swept away as part of an active bee colony in some mythic Elysian Fields keenly uncovered by Huber from his heightened scent alone. Flynn's prose is mysteriously hypnotic, testing our own powers of imagination and views on work, aggression, love, and commitment." —Provincetown Banner

"In Blind Huber, Nick Flynn has collaborated with a swarm of honeybees and a sightless old French beekeeper of a distant century to produce a cycle of poemsexposing the fierceness and wonder of the dance of life in the natural world. This is a work of the creative imagination unlike any other, so deeply grounded in its field of observation that it reinforces William Blake's emphatic pronouncement: 'To particularize is the alone distinction of merit....For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.'" —Stanley Kunitz

"Flynn is unquestionably one of the most interesting poets writing today, and avid poetry readers should be lining up for this book." —Library Journal

"Flynn imaginatively enters the rarefied existence of a French 18^th century beekeeper named François Huber. . . . As fascinated by the bees' point of view as by Huber’s phenomenal ability to divine their ways through sound, touch, and smell, Flynn writes with exquisite delicacy and transporting agility not only of the blind apiarist’s vivid perceptions but also of the experiences of drones, workers, and queens. Spellbound within wax edifices beneath a honey rain, Flynn succinctly and resonantly contrasts the dense and thrumming bee realm with our own buzzing, bittersweet world of avid appetites and aggressions. longing, and valor." —Booklist

"The compact and compelling lyric sequence imagines Huber, Burnens, and the bees themselves as they reveal their nature, and their behavior over Huber’s long and patient life." —Publishers Weekly