The Fears

by Kevin Prufer

An unflinching study of death, Kevin Prufer’s The Fears invites us to consider what it means to matter . Editor, publisher, and poet Kevin Prufer presents his ninth poetry collection, The Fears , an intimate meditation on storytelling and mortality. "Ghostlit by streetlights” and filtered through tale and recollection, Prufer examines our fears of loss, death, and obscurity. Narratives are braided together as Prufer manipulates white space to mimic the silence of minds at work on unsolvable problems, how time “unravels / endlessly.” Here, visions of classical Greece and the trials of ancient Romans coexist with the everyday—memories of a parent’s death or the loss of a pet. We bear witness as the poet writes to preserve the intricacy of his own mind against the “certainty of absence.” Exploring what it means to be forgotten and how legacy is preserved through poetry, history books, a mummy’s index finger, and love letters from the grave, The Fears invites us to consider what it means to matter .

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published October 3, 2023

About the author

Kevin Prufer's newest poetry collection, The Fears, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2023 and received the 2024 Rilke Prize. His new novel Sleepaway was published in 2024 by Acre Books. He is also the author of several other books of poetry, including The Art of Fiction (2021), How He Loved Them (2018), Churches (2014), In a Beautiful Country (2011), and National Anthem (2008), all from Four Way Books.

He's edited several volumes of poetry, including New European Poets (Graywolf Press, 2008; w/ Wayne Miller), Literary Publishing in the 21st Century (Milkweed Editions, 2016; w/ Wayne Miller & Travis Kurowski), and Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries (Graywolf Press, 2017; w/Martha Collins).

With Wayne Miller and Martin Rock, Prufer directs the Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to bringing the work of great but little known authors to new generations of readers through the annual republication of a large body of each author's work, printed alongside essays, photographs, and ephemera.

Prufer is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and the low-residency MFA at Lesley University.

Among Prufer's awards and honors are many Pushcart prizes and Best American Poetry selections, numerous awards from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation. His poetry collection How He Loved Them was long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the Julie Suk Award for the best poetry book of 2018 from the American literary press.

Born in 1969 in Cleveland, Ohio, Kevin Prufer studied at Wesleyan University (BA), Hollins College (MA) and Washington University (MFA).

Reviews

[Ken]

Love the covers on Prufer's book. A poet new to me (thanks to a poem read in POETRY magazine). Leans narrative. Uses a lot of jagged indentations and white space on the page. Clever. In this case, many poems on a theme of ancient Rome (or Greece) but always rooted in the present to prove the more things change, the more they stay the same.

[Reagan Kapasi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked: Emotional assessment of loss and legacy (particularly parents). Disliked: ancient Rome.

[Milton Párraga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the almost 40 books of poetry I have read this year, this is among the top 3. The Washington Post about a month ago reported on a social media trend asking men how often they thought about ancient Rome and the answer for many men was almost weekly. Count Kevin Prufer among that trend ("But who teach about the Romans now?/ Eight hundred years of Romans/stretching their legs/among sun-dappled temples/talking about chariot races./ Who would speak for them?') as his poems dive into antiquity and compare the deaths of historical figures to how death is experienced today and the ultimate void that we all will enter once we experience it. Instead of the battlefields of history, the transition to dying in hospitals today is not much of an improvement in how death is experienced:

"I held his cock in my hand/while he pissed into a dirty drinking glass./Thank you,/he said
when he was through./And in that moment,/I could not remember him/the way I knew he'd
once been,/a man, a human being,/more the accumulation/of the failures/of a dying animal
body./Hospitals/do this to you."

And yet, as a childless individual without the hope of "living" through them, he almost tenderly puts his hope in literature ("I have written poems/and uploaded them/to the mind of Literature./If they hover in probable silence,/I hope it is the silence of thought/and not negation.") to outlast the human body. Yet through the act of witnessing, Prufer doesn't succumb to fatalistic existentialism, as the very act of living contributes to history and the opportunity to do something meaningful--even though the sentiment of "You really don't matter" is always present ("I felt it again,/a certainty/that words weren't/imperfect mirrors reflecting reality,/but they created/ a reality out of/ nothing..."). Palliative medicine for the terminal perhaps, but an act of mercy to help ease the suffering.

[Amy]

Hoo, boy. Once again Prufer proves that he is a master weaver. Many of his poems are like those baking shows that toss a limited list of ingredients at the bakers to see what they'll make of them. Prufer's landing place in this volume is the fears: the rolling stream of empires destructive and peaceful, ancient and current; personal deaths of parents and pets; a devastating election result; a virus; and most saliently the dread of being dead then forgotten. We know in our little minds that we're going to die, but we don't believe it: "a perfect, impossible little thought" he writes upon pondering that he's going to "vanish" in the title poem. There are distinctions among the poems, but to me they mostly feel like one long meditation.

Automotive is one poem I'd like to study more, but I like what I think is its thesis.

Favorite poems:

A Dog Barking into the Night
A History of My Schooling
Condominiums
Cannibalism
Anesthesia

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was required reading for my MFA program and I found it to be an exercise in appreciating the merits of a work I don’t necessarily personally enjoy. Ultimately, I wished for more of an emotional punch (the poems are very restrained, in my opinion) and think the collection could’ve done well with a few judicious cuts, but appreciated its topical and tonal cohesion, its many angles on similar subjects, accessibility, and the number of questions it generated for me to think about.

[Kelly Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wouldn't have picked this book for myself, but I really enjoyed some of the poems in it. My favorite poem in this was "Absences". I think Prufer did a really great job manipulating agency and primacy to control the reader's proximity to the narrative. I found one of the central ideas of the collection--how our words and stories live long after us or fade into oblivion--to be compellingly explored in this work.

[Shawn Aebi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection, reaching back into mythology or Roman Empire dynasty, but mostly centered on current events such as healthcare, elections.

[Karson Dickinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars. read this for school!

[Sarah Belli · Rating 5 out of 5]

😮‍💨

[Cana Peirce · Rating 5 out of 5]

A uniquely contemplative, conversational poetic voice pervades Prufer's writing as he explores themes of mortality through anecdote and allusion to antiquity and the classical age

[Carla Panciera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this collection; loved the weaving of thoughts of one's own legacy with allusions to ancient history; loved the voice and its intimacy. Highly recommend.