Well into the Night

When overcome by the intensities of life, we often seek shelter from the storm in all kinds of impotent palliatives designed to numb and distract. Yet another possibility always presents itself. The act of standing in the storm. This involves enlisting the help of the poet. The one who is able to articulate our suffering in such an artful way that it is simultaneously sublimated. When confronted with the words of the poet, we can find a way to bear the intensities of life and even celebrate them. Andreas Fleps is such a poet. His work mines the darkest recesses of the human experience without flinching. Yet he speaks this reality in such a piercing way that it undergoes a reversal. Darkness becomes light, death becomes life. These poems penetrate the dark heart of human existence while protesting against hopelessness. Their exploration of the night bears witness to the coming of the dawn. — Pete Rollins

Andreas Fleps’ Well into the Night is a gift made with trembling hands to the enemies we may see inside our own skin. A love note to the obstacles, this collection is celebratory in its revelation and accounting of struggle. Like a child dancing in the storm, naming the thunder while refusing to be cowed by its violence, Fleps’ work here is remarkable for its daring. From the surprisingly delicate language with which he transcribes trauma to the depths of his narrative curiosity, Fleps reminds us how someone who has felt “the emergency room was his body” can also experience the call of empathy for others, to “… multiply breath for those who cannot breathe.” These poems are an almost autonomic response to the experience of living. Well into the Night is a book that belongs on every bookshelf. —  Zachary Kluckman, author of Some of It is Muscle and The Animals in Our Flesh.

I met the man before I met his words. I sensed his hunger before I dined at his table. In this age where people seem to be reacting to abstraction with increasing rage and frustration, and are grasping onto nostalgia like a raft in a storm — poets are needed more than ever. Those who can weave a new imaginary, call for a new future, pull us toward the uncertain without resorting to tired tropes and empty platitudes. This is a book for the hungry, for those who yearn, not for some reframing of what has already been, but a new world yet to be born, hidden in the folds of poetic license. – Barry Taylor