Full Description
Yes it is both river and sea / yes they mingle together here / yes one empties for the other / yes it tastes like tears
In a powerful interplay of striking descriptions with tender intimations, Empties, Neil Surkan's third poetry collection, reckons with fatherhood in a depleted and collapsing environment: Is it possible to nurture new shoots while the fires close in?
Feelings of emptiness, acts of emptying, and physical empties coalesce in these vivid and timely poems. Through a queer lens, Surkan's speaker scrutinizes masculinity and fatherhood as he confronts the necessary emptiness that comes with becoming someone's ancestor. Arrays of drained and discarded entities - empty bottles, broken pots and cups - summon a world, husked and untenably extracted, that teeters toward collapse, but even those empty spaces are receptacles for fleeting moments of vulnerability and tenderness. At its core, Empties explores the conditions of life on the verge of hopelessness. It finds, among shadows of doom and despair, unlikely but nonetheless inevitable reasons to hope.
These are poems that teach endurance "in the face of all that won't / be saved" while still finding much in the world "to cherish / as it brinks." In direness, there is also awe: one mustn't forget, Surkan reminds us, that only empty bottles can sing.
Contents
Brackish 3
Endurance 5
Empties 6
The Seeding of Clouds 7
Flounder 9
Sure 10
A Crack 11
Burning Question 12
Smokesong 13
Remains 14
Ars Poetica 15
Descriptions of Coral 16
Sirens 17
[faith]
The Lag 21
Ruin 22
Unhomesickness 23
Is Through 26
Murmurations 27
The Edge 29
Kiss 30
Reflection 32
Brinks 33
Time to Apologize to Your Mother 36
[Without you,]
The Deep 41
The Will 48
Take 49
Optimism 50
The Worst 51
Tattoo Talk with the Acupuncturist 52
The Recapitated 53
Limits 54
Well 55
Vessel 58
[running]
Die Workbook 73
Empties 86
Notes 89
Acknowledgments 91
