Keynote
The newest collection from Nick Flynn, whose “songs of experience hum with immediacy” (The New York Times)
Book Title
I Will Destroy You
Subtitle
Poems
Cover Image
- “Beautifully crafted poems from the (broken) heart; the masterly Flynn doesn’t drag us into the depths but rises to meet us.”—Library Journal
Poem Excerpt
Here’s
the deal—if you die
then I will be able
to drink again & no
one alive will even
blame me—this,
child, is
the dark wind in-
side, but not
the darkest.
—from “Text to be Whispered by the Bed of a Sleeping Child”
the deal—if you die
then I will be able
to drink again & no
one alive will even
blame me—this,
child, is
the dark wind in-
side, but not
the darkest.
—from “Text to be Whispered by the Bed of a Sleeping Child”
Body
Beginning with a poem called “Confessional” and ending with a poem titled “Saint Augustine,” I Will Destroy You interrogates the potential of art to be redemptive, to remake and reform. But first the maker of art must claim responsibility for his past, his actions, his propensity to destroy others and himself. “Begin by descending,” Augustine says, and the poems delve into the deepest, most defeating parts of the self: addiction, temptation, infidelity, and repressed memory. These are poems of profound self-scrutiny and lyric intensity, jagged and probing. I Will Destroy You is an honest accounting of all that love must transcend and what we must risk for its truth.
List Price
$16.00
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About the Author
Credit: Ryan McGinley
Praise
- “Nick Flynn's fifth collection of poems is riveting, the verses scalding in their passion. . . . I Will Destroy You is a superb book.”—Shelf Awareness
- “Nick Flynn’s poems are gritty and emotional, grim and loving, funny and also about death and addiction and grief. I can’t wait to sleep with this volume under my pillow.”—Lit Hub
- “Each poem is a compelling dynamic where language is shattered and rebuilt to convey truths that are haunting and beautiful. Nobody bends a lyric the way Flynn does to break the heart.”—Washington Independent Review of Books
- “What is there to say when a book is such absolute perfection—beauty, grief, and redemption—that it literally takes all words and air from the mouth?”—Jacqueline Woodson
