An unflinching study of death, Kevin Prufer's The Fearsinvites us to consider what it means to matter.
Editor, publisher, and poet Kevin Prufer presents his ninth poetry collection,The Fears 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.
About the Author :
Kevin Prufer's recent books include The Art of Fiction, Churches, and How He Loved Them, which was long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. His work has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lannan Foundation, and the Poetry Society of American and appeared on "best of the year" lists in The New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, BookList, and others. Prufer has also edited or co-edited many volumes, including New European Poetry, Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentary, and Literary Publishing in the 21st CenturyHe teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, where he co-directs The Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to bringing great but little-known authors to new generations of readers.
Review :
Praise for The Fears
“Picking up a collection of Prufer’s poems feels, to me at least, like settling into a favorite reading chair for the afternoon: he has found a form that mimics the way his own brain works, and given up the endless search for something new. A reader doesn’t have to learn a new language, and Prufer can focus on his real subject matter.”—Susanna Lang, Rhino Poetry
“The Fears, Prufer’s night collection, wastes no time with an oblique opening. It is a book that demands attention its entries and exits, the portals of learning, of death, and of thinking itself. . . . This is the work of The Fears: to take ‘action against fear,’ a fear that, if we allow it, keeps us from the task of making art. . . . Prufer shows us enough times that art, like us, fades, but he also, I think, shows us that value of human activity, of engaging the faculty of thought.”—Chelsea Christine Hill, West Branch
Praise for Kevin Prufer
“A gothic extravaganza featuring alligators, avalanches and medical devices left inside bodies, delivered largely in long, musical free verse lines. Poetry at full boil, poured with deliberate abandon.”—David Orr, New York Times Book Review
“Prufer's skillful use of traditional form; the presence of rhyme, meter, sonnets, and ars poeticae creates a complex and rich collection.”—American Poet
“In The Fears, his ninth collection, Kevin Prufer examines how each of us becomes “a dying animal body,” eventually losing what makes us human to sickness, grief, and even the indifference of the nation state. The poems place the ancient Greeks and Romans alongside vivdly rendered portraits of loved ones—a father dying of cancer, for instance—so that the epic, heroic past becomes a lens for meditating on the small, intimate tragedies of the present. . . . Bleak, clear-eyed, bracingly unsentimental, and insistent on the necessity of precise, accurate language, The Fears asks readers to remain politically engaged, to continue caring about the world. The poet urges us, even though we are mortal and will one day end up like Antigone, 'nowhere,' to keep paying attention to the vivid, haunting moments that comprise our lives: the broken finger of a mummy, a frozen bottle of wine, the 'little pink tongue' of a lost kitten.”—UNT Rilke Prize Winner, Judges Citation
“I don’t believe the box of notes you admit carrying in your pocket can be described by you as a simple record of the times. In truth, the poems [of How He Loved Them] delineate a passion for the world in eloquent and profound ways, vividly understandable when conveyed to the reader.”—Judge’s comments, 2018 Julie Suk Award
“The Classical world has been many things to many writers—a world of austere beauty, of debauched lust and excess, of mystery cults or of reason and mathematical inquiry. For the Kevin Prufer of The Fears, though, it is primarily a vanished world, and in this respect a mirror reflecting our own future, where we fade first into, then out of, memory.”—Robert Archambeau, Hudson Review
“Intimacy, clarity of feeling, subtle music—these are the hallmarks of the lyric poem, and all three of these attributes are found in [“My Newspapers,”] my selection for the Lyric Poetry Award.”—Mark Wunderlich, Poetry Society of America
“Classical history is a controlling conceit throughout The Fears. The book is filled with poems that evoke scenes of emperors and famous battles of antiquity. However, the poems never feel mired in the past. Instead, the past seems more like a tool for the speaker to begin to reckon with the fact that their present will soon be antiquity. Often, when poets use historical references in poems, they risk retreading well-worn territory or alienating their readers by burying their arguments in academic references. But [Prufer's] work makes the historical elements feel fresh and necessary . . . an incredibly moving meditation on mortality and the ways in which we all struggle to leave our mark on the world.”—Keith Kopka, Adroit Journal
“[Prufer’s] work is deep, but never goes too far. He makes you think about the world, the country, and yourself in such an analytical way.”—Britney Gulbrandsen
“Kevin Prufer has courage and compassion. And he places words so beautiful and accurate and terrifying along a line you can’t help but read to the end.”—Marie Howe
