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Rating: 
Summary: I miss this book.
Review: ...this book desperately needs to go play in traffic...
Rating:
Summary: What a rush- amazing
Review: I read this small book with excitement growing to fierce joy.
I'd expected something dreamy and pastoral, or remote, but the charged language took me straight to the frontlines of a fight for existence, love, comprehension. Some of the compact, measured poems felt dangerous, like standing in the middle of a freeway, feeling the heat of traffic speeding past, or leaning almost too far over a cliff, and random thrills of phrases and images came back to my mind, later. Others are more observation, less breathless, but with a focussed fascination. The poems have the structural strength of a well-built old stone wall, which is great, because the perspective zooms wildly in and out, and the whole thing could have just been loopy in lesser hands. The poems build but don't rely on each other, they're broad, and don't spoil themselves for rereading. The language is very physical, accessible, timeless, and sounds as well out loud as read silently. I'm getting a couple more copies, the ones I had were gathered up by curious friends.
Rating:
Summary: experience viewed through an alternative lens
Review: I think it was a wise choice for Flynn to turn from the overtly autobiographical poems of his powerful first book to a radically different project. Isn't that a strength for a poet, to be able to switch lenses, discover new ways to make meaning by shifting the formal parameters of the poem? The strangeness, beauty and ferocity of the world of bees becomes, in Flynn's hands, a platform for the investigation of human experience. What better metaphor than the hive to help us think about community and individuality, the whole and the singular? These poems are haunting, weird and alive; they reward the reader's patience and willingness to enter into their world with a remarkable intensity of feeling, and a compelling vision.
Rating:
Summary: I miss this book.
Review: Someone borrowed it and didn't return it. So I'm here buying a second copy and was surprised to read bad customer reviews. Nick's fine observations and sensitive explorations of life in the hive are very satisfying to me. What vital person isn't interested in bees or ants, even if only as analogies of us?
Rating: 
Summary: ouch
Review: This book has a beautiful cover, but the poems inside bored me. I liked Flynn's first book a lot, so I'm sorry to say this. Some Ether took the unfashionable risk of expressing honest personal emotion. The whole hive thing could have been interesting, but the language here is at once too stylized and too flat to describe a world as sensuous as the world of bees. This sort of writing does not lie within Flynn's talent at all, and the world he creates gets unnecessarily complicated with the story of the Huber and Burnens characters. It's hard to keep track of who is speaking. Who is Huber? Who is Burnens? Who is a bee? I finally said who cares and gave up. I hope Flynn goes back to what he's good at (maybe better than anyone else) in his next book.
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