In Transit (New Criterion Books, 2021)

SYNOPSIS

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 converge in poems that consider complex power dynamics, as when an older man befriends a younger one, while drawing 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 Shirt of Nessus” and “The Death of Argos,” two poems that center on the same fleeting love affair in Greece, building on each other and on their titular myths. Above all, though, the poems of In Transit capture a world in flux, turning to form as a stay against the transitory nature of experience.

PRAISE

“As Nicholas Pierce reminds us with poignancy and force, our lives are rarely static, careening between places—the dust of West Texas or poolside in Florida—and from person to person: parents, teachers, lovers. Capturing the erotic charge in the touch of a beloved mentor, a whirlwind attraction on a Greek isle, or a mother’s final illness, Pierce revisits his formative relationships, each one essential and, ultimately, fleeting. He feels deeply how ‘we’re bound by the knowledge/ that what we have won’t last long.’ His poems commemorate what would otherwise be lost, and we, as his readers, are vastly richer for it.”

—David Yezzi, author of More Things in Heaven (Measure Press, 2022)

“In poems remarkable for their precision and intelligence, Nicholas Pierce considers the complexities of unlikely friendships, the naiveties of youth, and the certainties of death and loss. These poems hurtle through geographies of time, always drawing on the force of storytelling, on well-drawn characters in difficult situations. Psychologically astute and formally adept, Pierce writes poetry that is at once elegant, sophisticated, and an absolute pleasure to read.”

—Kevin Prufer, author of The Fears (Copper Canyon Press, 2023)

REVIEW

Of Love and Boundaries: Nicholas Pierce's In Transit by Peter Vertacnik, Literary Matters, Issue 15.1