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In Transit
In Transit, Nicholas Pierce’s debut poetry collection, charts the poet’s maturation across three sections, each centering on a different kind of love, from the pedagogical to the romantic to the familial. Form and subject are inseparable in poems that consider the complex power dynamic of an older man befriending a younger one, that draw on such classic texts as Plato’s Symposium and Homer’s Odyssey to make sense of the seemingly random encounters and missed chances that, as one poem puts it, “make up a life.”
As the book’s title suggests, these poems take place on the move, in cars, on boats and planes. They find the speaker abroad, as in “The Death of Argos,” a sonnet sequence that invents a new configuration for the form. Above all, though, the poems of In Transit attempt to capture a world in flux, turning to form as a stay against the transitory nature of experience.
As the book’s title suggests, these poems take place on the move, in cars, on boats and planes. They find the speaker abroad, as in “The Death of Argos,” a sonnet sequence that invents a new configuration for the form. Above all, though, the poems of In Transit attempt to capture a world in flux, turning to form as a stay against the transitory nature of experience.
80 pages, Hardcover
Published November 30, 2021
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January 13, 2022
I’ll admit slight bias because Nick is a friend and former classmate of mine, but I think this debut collection is a must-read for any lovers of contemporary poetry who doubt the impact/importance of form. These poems deploy their many complex forms as a sort of setting through which the speaker weaves and dips, withholding and divulging in turn.
Pierce shines most when calling attention to the rules his poems live by, often cheekily (i.e. a rhyming quatrain discussing the speaker’s need “to package an experience in, say / rhyming quatrains”). These meta-revelations often expose vulnerabilities the speaker feels remiss to come out and admit, and gives the wonderful sensation that the self-imposed restrictions of writing in sestinas and sonnets are their own kind of freedom.
Pierce shines most when calling attention to the rules his poems live by, often cheekily (i.e. a rhyming quatrain discussing the speaker’s need “to package an experience in, say / rhyming quatrains”). These meta-revelations often expose vulnerabilities the speaker feels remiss to come out and admit, and gives the wonderful sensation that the self-imposed restrictions of writing in sestinas and sonnets are their own kind of freedom.
Displaying 1 of 1 review