Famous by Kathleen Flenniken
“[Famous] weaves together two seemingly antithetical themes: the comic indignations and attractions of minor celebrities, and the everyday joys and sorrows of family life. . . . Ordinariness—our need for it, and our frustrations with it—becomes Flenniken’s signature subject: the quietest evenings ‘make you what you are.’ Flenniken . . . has fashioned a poetry comfortable with self-imposed limits. . . . She still finds herself searching after mysteries, in board games, novels, and her own life.” —Publishers Weekly Annex
“At some point in our lives, most of us come to realize that we aren’t going to play for the major leagues or star on the silver screen or win the Nobel Peace Prize, that the accretion over time of our choices and mistakes isn’t adding up to a life quite as dazzling as the one we originally might have envisioned. Nonetheless, we’re still more or less the authors of our lives, and rather than throw in the towel we have to keep moving—sometimes blundering ahead, sometimes taking interesting detours, and only occasionally pulling up with perplexity at those metaphorical forks in the road. That wryly revised sense of self is precisely what Kathleen Flenniken is writing about in her new poetry collection, Famous. While there are elements of pretend in these poems, there is not a shred of pretentiousness. . . . Famous is a genuine treasure, which undoubtedly is why it was awarded the 2005 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry.”—Barbara Lloyd McMichael, The Seattle Times
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