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The Captain Asks For A Show Of Hands (2011)

by Nick Flynn(Favorite Author)

3.74 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1555975747 (ISBN13: 9781555975746)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

Graywolf Press

review 1: Many readers write that this collection doesn't stand on its own--the source material is more powerful, Flynn's memoir sheds more light on the topic, etc. But I disagree. Excuse the pun, but these are tortured poems--if you read them aloud, they HURT. They have problems with breath, interruption, repetition, and coherence that simulate the physical and mental pain of torture. Part of the power of Flynn's technique is the blur he creates between torturer and tortured--this became most apparent in his "seven testimonies (redacted)," where you read the original after and realize it takes effort to attribute the sides represented. This blur is deeply disturbing, and moves through witness to incrimination and culpability. I found the lyricism disturbing as well, especially in l... moreight of the highlighted fact that music was played during the torturing. This is a powerful and important book of poetry that actually engages with the contemporary world, with its culture, politics and atrocities.
review 2: There are maybe ten really strong poems in this book. The rest are fragments, riffs and echoes around the central topic of torture, specifically the U.S. torture of detainees in Abu Ghraib. I commend Flynn for taking on this timely, difficult project, and I was intrigued by Flynn's lyric poetic approach to it, but ultimately, this collection doesn't do it justice. In fact, the playful musicality, elliptical rhetoric and dense repetition of these poems seem at times to undercut or diffuse the brutal reality. The most powerful language in the book is in the "Notes" section, where Flynn has included the actual transcribed testimonies of seven Abu Ghraib detainees. Makes me wonder about the purpose of political lyric poetry, at least as Flynn practices it here-- when the primary documents are so powerful, what is the role of the poet, exactly? less

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