The Fears

Kevin Prufer

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 eventual / certainty of [his] 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.

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ISBN: 9781556596643

Format: Paperback

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A Body of Work

One comes, eventually, to the realization
that one will leave behind only
a body of work that will grow increasingly
unintelligible to each new generation. A trace
will remain spread across the vast
internet in much the way certain particles
inhabit the emptiness of deep space—negligibly,
though perhaps measurably. I, for instance,
am childless and, therefore, most likely
will die alone, my nest feathered
with yellowing poems. One comes, eventually,
to the knowledge that one’s children
are increasingly unintelligible, being yellowing
poems spread across the emptiness of deep space—
negligible, though they once seemed, in their way,
to breathe. For instance, I am alive, right here,
in the middle of my poem, having had, perhaps,
too much to drink. One comes, eventually,
to the certainty that one’s body of work
is nothing like another man’s progeny, being
made of language, which can only veer
toward emptiness as years become empty space.
For instance, hello? I am calling out to you,
folded here between the pages
of generations. You don’t know me, but once
I was particulate and alive. Now what am I?

About the Author

Kevin Prufer is the author of several books, most recently The Art of Fiction, How He Loved Them, Churches, and In a Beautiful Country, all from Four Way Books. His books have received the Julie Suk Award; made “Best of the Year” lists from the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and elsewhere; been short-listed for the Rilke Prize, the Poets Prize, and the Balcones Prize, and long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. Among Prufer’s edited volumes are New European Poets and Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries, …

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Reviews

“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

“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