Nick Flynn, well-traveled poet
Nick Flynn’s poetry led to a memoir, a play and a possible movie. But it has taken many years and many, many drafts to get this far.
July 2, 2008
 Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night In Suck City |
NEW YORK — On his passport, Nick Flynn lists his profession as “poet,” but there is nothing anemic or brooding about his appearance. On a recent afternoon in New York’s West Village, he dismounted the bike he rides every day from Brooklyn to Manhattan looking like a man ready to ride another 50 miles. In person, as in his prose and poetry, Flynn is exuberant and present, a friendly force to be reckoned with.
He pushed his long hair out of his face and rearranged his backpack before settling into his favorite Greenwich Village cafe. He talked about everything but his work — most especially about the birthing classes he had been taking with his partner, actress Lili Taylor, who was about to give birth to their daughter. Nick Flynn, the award-winning poet and the bestselling author of a 2004 memoir “Another . . . Night . . .,” whose clever, angry title cannot be printed in full, is happy and healthy. After some prodding, he talked about his career, which he agreed had “not been very calculated or thought out.” He paused a moment, staring around the cafe in wonder. “At least not for financial compensation,” he laughed.
Flynn is 47 and many of the details of his life can be found in the two books of poetry he has published, “Some Ether” in 2000 and “Blind Huber” in 2002, along with the memoir. This month he returns with his first full-length play, “Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins,” to be published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.