Reaction

As Flynn's Some Ether relives his traumatic past through the power of the elliptical, both Tony Hoagland and Calvin Bedient lend opinion which feels ungrounded. In Hoaglund's review, he conveys a strange ambiguity with the idea of confessionalism. He regards the term as a nice idea which will someday become antiquated, if it isn’t already, as Bedient accurately states. In this way the rest of his review struggles. Although he acknowledges the fact that Flynn's book doesn’t make any promises that confessionalism is a healing act, he seems to regard it with a familiar calming quality which damages his more center position in the end. Yet Bedient's review also presents problems. His argument is structured around Flynn's ties to his past and his inability to create the new. He combines the valid point that poetry comes from the now, "everything has yet to be done," with his description of Flynn’s work as a “banal narrative.”

If one does not realize the elliptical nature of Flynn’s work the fact that it is indeed rooted in the past is a very worthy criticism. In addition Hoaglund’s description ofEther as, “a snow globe in the hand of the dazed survivor of a battle,” does not give credit to Flynn’s shaping of the past into a disconnected world of elliptical allusion and residue. I would much rather compare Ether with Hoaglund’s phrase, “Dazed but curious, connected but detached,” instead of the whimsical connotations arising from “snow globe.” Flynn’s work shows that pure confessionalism brings no solace and instead finds meaning through its disjointed nature which provides an ether for dealing with grief.

I dreamt your suicide note

was scrawled in pencil on a brown paperbag,

& in the bag were six baby mice.

One can never find normality after loss. Flynn moves us towards a deeper understanding.