$14.00
In stock
These are poems about the anxiety of what must be traded for the comfort of the flock. “Flock books” allow farmers to register and track livestock, and these poems survey the anxieties of that registry: the comfort of shelter as trade for living under the weight of threats-of removal, conformity, or one’s own urge to stray.
“Meticulous attention to environment is here matched by an equally meticulous attention to syntax and sound play, underscoring language itself as a biome, a thriving sphere of mutually supportive differences. Umans’ elastic ecosystems are full of convoluted narratives and ornate logics, all presented in tight, torqued phrases that put such pressure on individual words that they gleam. The whole book is a weave of glints, flashes, and extended dazzles. A sheer delight!”
-Cole Swensen
In these mysterious, inventive poems we feel the presence of the other breath in the darkness, at once disturbing and consoling. Flock Book takes stock of the human condition in which Umans’ startling images and irreverent wit give us moments as savory as they are poignant-and in a language as satisfying as ‘the goodsnap of elastic things.'”
-Beckian Fritz Goldberg
