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Flourish
Published by a misFit book
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
“Smart, clear-eyed… Turner’s gift is for beautiful concision.” — Georgia Straight on The Ends of the Earth
Jacqueline Turner’s Flourish moves between philosophy, literary criticism, biography, and poetry. Both personal and experimental, her writing becomes transformative as it explores memories of growing up in a small town, parenting a set of adventurous sons, traveling, and reading. At times her poems act like micro essays, at other times they are miniature memoirs or precise manifestos, and throughout the collection’s exploration of contemporary cities and culture, a tense beauty emerges.
Turner takes readers to a park in Berlin set up like a messy living room, to a gallery in Granada where the view from a window beside a famous painting more perfectly frames an ancient stone wall, and to a karaoke room in Tokyo where comedic possibilities merge with spilled drinks. In the end, Flourish celebrates the abundance of words already read, while conveying gratitude for the ones still about to be read. A bold gesture, a green light, a way forward in challenging times.
Jacqueline Turner’s Flourish moves between philosophy, literary criticism, biography, and poetry. Both personal and experimental, her writing becomes transformative as it explores memories of growing up in a small town, parenting a set of adventurous sons, traveling, and reading. At times her poems act like micro essays, at other times they are miniature memoirs or precise manifestos, and throughout the collection’s exploration of contemporary cities and culture, a tense beauty emerges.
Turner takes readers to a park in Berlin set up like a messy living room, to a gallery in Granada where the view from a window beside a famous painting more perfectly frames an ancient stone wall, and to a karaoke room in Tokyo where comedic possibilities merge with spilled drinks. In the end, Flourish celebrates the abundance of words already read, while conveying gratitude for the ones still about to be read. A bold gesture, a green light, a way forward in challenging times.
Excerpt
“Avoid the Flourish” — Leonard Cohen, “How to Speak Poetry”
it was meant to be simple
we loved it and it was simple
a plain pine box as
hearts broke to cries of hallelujah
it was meant to be
simple
it was meant
to be
it was
meant
it had meaning
the people agree
as they post versions of Hallelujahs
as others post telling them
they are posting the wrong
Hallelujahs
a fight broke out
about who Famous Blue Raincoat
meant more to
nostalgia for a lost love
or whisper singing in bed
as a sign of contemporary intimacy
who soothes your insomnia at ‘4 in the morning/end of December’?
it was a gravel voice, a gravelly voice
it was profound and it sang out to the hills
it was always a hymn, it was always an anthem
it went ‘a thousand kisses deep’ or it broke open
‘the crack to let the light in’
it was many things
to many people
it was always a dance, always a poem
always thinly veiled fiction
it was beautiful and it was loser-ish
it was mine more than yours
yours more than mine
it was trouble for a troubled time
it was humility in the crease of greatness
it was always an epic, an ode
it made you cry every time
it unleashed you, untethered
it made you freer, it let you off
your flight, light, bright
it was always surrender
it was always trying to figure you out
it was always helping you, giving you courage
it was fragments and pieces, it was notions
it was always deep understanding
it was eventually
it was soft and you loved it
it was always from a distance
it was always ‘you look good when you’re tired’
always ‘you look like you could go on forever.’
it was meant to be simple
we loved it and it was simple
a plain pine box as
hearts broke to cries of hallelujah
it was meant to be
simple
it was meant
to be
it was
meant
it had meaning
the people agree
as they post versions of Hallelujahs
as others post telling them
they are posting the wrong
Hallelujahs
a fight broke out
about who Famous Blue Raincoat
meant more to
nostalgia for a lost love
or whisper singing in bed
as a sign of contemporary intimacy
who soothes your insomnia at ‘4 in the morning/end of December’?
it was a gravel voice, a gravelly voice
it was profound and it sang out to the hills
it was always a hymn, it was always an anthem
it went ‘a thousand kisses deep’ or it broke open
‘the crack to let the light in’
it was many things
to many people
it was always a dance, always a poem
always thinly veiled fiction
it was beautiful and it was loser-ish
it was mine more than yours
yours more than mine
it was trouble for a troubled time
it was humility in the crease of greatness
it was always an epic, an ode
it made you cry every time
it unleashed you, untethered
it made you freer, it let you off
your flight, light, bright
it was always surrender
it was always trying to figure you out
it was always helping you, giving you courage
it was fragments and pieces, it was notions
it was always deep understanding
it was eventually
it was soft and you loved it
it was always from a distance
it was always ‘you look good when you’re tired’
always ‘you look like you could go on forever.’
Product Details
- Publisher: a misFit book (September 17, 2019)
- Length: 128 pages
- ISBN13: 9781770415065
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Raves and Reviews
“Written from the vantage of a writer in the middle of her life and career, Jacqueline Turner’s Flourish looks back — longingly yet complexly — on autobiographical events and instrumental texts that have shaped the politics and poetics of her current self. The brief episodes recounted in this body of work slowly accumulate and resonate, perhaps especially for women who grew up in Canada in the 1980s and ’90s. Flourish is a quiet tornado: riveting, expansive, and profoundly moving on multiple levels. Time buckles and reverses as Turner contemplates her father’s death, her children’s entries into adulthood, and her own emergence as an established writer. As a fellow girl who was not expected to become important, I shiver with recognition at Turner’s various ‘returns to the beginning at the end.’ Yet Flourish is not Turner’s end — not by far!” — Theresa Smalec, Associate Professor, Bronx Community College/City University of New York
“Jacqueline Turner’s Flourish is ‘meant to be simple.’ Isn’t it? It reads nostalgia. Here, a state of being, yearning for a time that might not have been particularly all that grand. What it wants back is not what it was. What was simple reflects without force. Such simplicity was all here too: the past and its residue, hesitant speech parts and its counterparts, trips and its trip-ups. A blueprint for what it looks like to think and feel everything at once: I’m dazzled by it.” — Danielle LaFrance, author of Friendly + Fire and Just Like I Like It
“Reading Jacqueline Turner’s Flourish makes us want to write, to remember; also to sing, then read, then cry, and re-read. We’re reading it while thinking about reading, and remembering. What the book makes us want to do is re-think it all, and re-think remembering it all, and remember re-thinking it — and most of all — to keep reading this, to keep this reading. We know we’ll return to it again.” — Wayde Compton, author of The Outer Harbour, Performance Bond, 49th Parallel Psalm, and After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region
“[Turner’s] prose poems do come through in a rush; one that appears highly considered, each word and phrase weighed before set on the page, but with such an ease of flow akin to a sudden release of water.” — rob mclennan’s blog
“Turner’s work is an essential handbook of navigating our experience of time in COVID-tide, its moments of loss and denial. It reads our time well.” — The Typescript
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Flourish Trade Paperback 9781770415065
