Chapters (53)
- Cover
- Blind Huber
- Blind Huber
- Copyright
- Blind Huber (i)
- Swarm
- Blind Huber (ii)
- Workers (attendants)
- Hive
- Blind Huber (iii)
- Queen
- Workers (guards)
- Blind Huber (iv)
- Virgin Queen
- Drones
- Twinned
- Blind Huber (v)
- Inside Nothing
- Blind Huber (vi)
- Geometry
- Innocence
- Amber
- Melitopoles
- Wax (Jesus)
- Blind Huber (vii)
- Paper Wasp
- Xenophon’s Soldiers
- Without
- Pheromone
- Blind Huber (viii)
- Blind Huber (ix)
- Blind Huber (x)
- Wax Father
- Blind Huber (xi)
- Statuary
- Blind Huber (xii)
- Burnens (i)
- Unquiet
- Workers (foragers)
- Blind Huber (xiii)
- Rain
- Mites
- Blind Huber (xiv)
- Queen (failed)
- Workers (robbers)
- Worker (lost)
- Worker
- Unfamiliar
- Burnens (ii)
- gloss
- notes
- debts
- About the Author
The epigraphs that begin the final section are from Dadant’s Q&A on Beekeeping.
debts
Atlanta Review: “Burnens (ii),” “Blind Huber (xiv)”
BOMB: “Queen (failed),” “Xenophon’s Soldiers,” “Melitopoles”
canary river: “Geometry,” “Mites”
Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art: “Blind Huber (x),” “Drones”
Emergency Almanac: “Blind Huber (viii, xiii)”
jubilat: “Blind Huber (xii)”
The Kenyon Review: “Twinned,” “Workers (foragers),” “Queen”
New England Review: “Swarm,” “Paper Wasp”
Open City: “Rain,” “Workers (guards)”
The Paris Review: “Blind Huber (ii, iii, iv, v),” “Hive”
Perihelion: “Unfamiliar,” “Worker”
Pleiades: “Without”
Ploughshares: “Burnens (i)”
Post Road: “Amber,” “Statuary”
Provincetown Arts: “Workers (robbers),” “Wax Father”
Swerve: “Unquiet,” “Blind Huber (ix),” “Innocence”
Tin House: “Pheromone,” “Worker (lost)”
TriQuarterly: “Inside Nothing,” “Workers (attendants),” “Blind Huber (i)”
“Virgin Queen” was included in The Hand of the Poet exhibit at the New York Public Library, curated by Rodney Phillips, 1997.
“Virgin Queen” also appeared in Poets for the Next Millennium, a limited edition chapbook, edited and printed by Michael Peich, published by Aurelius Press, 1997.
“Inside Nothing” was included in a festschrift honoring Stanley Kunitz on his 96th birthday, published by Sheep Meadow Press, 2001.
“Inside Nothing” also appeared in the online zine, bkyn.com.
Visual artist Amy Kaczur incorporated the poem “Hive” into a wall text piece entitled “The Erotic Life of the Apex Mellifera,” May 2002, The University Gallery, University of California, Irvine.
I am indebted to all the above.
Also: the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the MacDowell Colony, the Schoolhouse Center for Art and Design, the College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota, the Library of Congress and the Witter Bynner Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, and New York University—it all helped.
Many friends shared their knowledge and insights with me over the years of writing these poems—each precious.
Also, the following were essential in one way or another: Mark Adams, Dorothy Antczak, Bob Bailey, David Brody, Matt Brown, Peter Cameron, Michael Carroll, Mark Conway, Caroline Crumpacker, Philip Glass, Jared Handelsman, Edward Hirsch, Tony Hoagland, Marie Howe, Nicholas Kahn/Richard Selesnick, Lily King, Richard McCann, Sarah Messer, Linda Nagaoka, Frances Richard, Paul Tasha, Fred Tomaselli, Reetika Vazirani, Sarah Walker, Rebecca Woolf—endless thanks.
About the Author
NICK FLYNN’s first book of poems, Some Ether, won the inaugural PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, the Larry Levis Prize, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is the author of two prose memoirs, The Ticking Is the Bomb and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. He teaches every spring in the writing program at the University of Houston, and divides his time between Brooklyn, Houston, and upstate New York.
The text is set in Giovanni, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach.
Book design by Wendy Holdman.
Typesetting by Stanton Publication Services, Inc.,
Manufactured by BookMobile on acid-free paper.