What'S This, Bombardier?: Poems (Lenamiles Wever Todd Poetry Series Award),New

From the Back Cover 'Ryan Flaherty delivers a magnificent, controlled rawness in What's This, Bombardier? Fullhearted and intellectually dexterous, it is an elegant scaffold constructed around the chaos of existential uncertainty. Flaherty moves deftly through the visceral sensuality of poems where 'bodies . . . are arriving from all over, throwing their coats / on my bed' and 'tripping / that trigger in my throat before I break,' to the ecclesiastical hesitation that also underpins this book, as in 'Canticle against the Canticle,' where we are reminded of the 'certain shame necessary / for living well.' Flaherty is a gifted poethis voice is panoramic and impeccably focused. What's This, Bombardier? is an outstanding book.' Alex Lemon 'While I read Ryan Flaherty's What's This, Bombardier? I kept hearing, as if in the back of my head, a sentence from one of his more unexpected poetic ancestors, Emily Dickinson: 'Strange that the most intangible thing should be the most adhesive.' Beneath the wit of these poems and wit there is in dizzying plentythere are sobering concerns, skeptical and philosophical quandaries that, almost as if by mistake, make themselves felt. For here, as Flaherty says, 'I mistake many things for source,' and in ways perhaps poetry alone can manage, to err well is the only honest method. Source is, no doubt, the stake'source,' that phenomenological thing unspeakable in the midst of a poem's speaking, that combustible thing asserting itself through out these poems, that riddling thing that is thing and nothing at all. yes, this adhesive thing that is Flaherty's, given to us in unsparing generosity, in serious playnot source exactly, but resource inexactly, in poems that are 'brilliant / without all the fuss of brilliance.'' Dan BeachyQuick 'In another world, where things are made of words, the poems of Ryan Flaherty would be flowers: there would be flowers in every thought, flowers rather than light bulbs, and flowers splashed upon the air. With the poems of Baudelaire, Flaherty's first collection would bloom in that other worldbut do so in whorls and loops, selfaware as any selfdeflecting postmodernist needs to be. A bouquet of poems, in which 'the fireflies / reset the coordinates': Flaherty's first book is charming, scintillating, challenging, and fun.' Alan Michael Parker Product Description Ryan Flaherty pays particular attention to linguistic slippages and etymologies as heexamines the persistent difficulties of language and love in his latest collection, What's This, Bombardier? Alternating between selfdeprecating humor and striking images, wry wordplay and a sense of awe at the beauties and absurdities of the world, these poems construct a postmodern play on the foundation of sadness, wonder, and longing. The combination is smart, fun, and ultimately heartbreaking an exciting, extraordinary debut. About the Author Ryan Flaherty is the recipient of the 2010 PEN /New England Discovery Award for Poetry.He has published two chapbooks, Novas, which won the Boom Chapbook Contest, and Live, from the Delay. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Ninth Letter, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Columbia, POOL, Conduit, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. He lives and teaches in New Hampshire.