Author: Amy Fleury
Genre: Poetry
Book: Beautiful Trouble (2004), published by Southern Illinois University Press
Winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry’s First Book Award. Her work has appeared in North American Review, Laurel Review, American Life in Poetry, among others, and Beautiful Trouble was listed in The Kansas City Star’s top 100 notable books of 2004.
While there are many poets out in the literary world who employ the dense, complex styles and forms for their poetry, it often doesn't translate very effectively to the general audience. So while scholars and professors giggle over their mastery of deciphering allusions to Greek myths and incomprehensible double sestinas, the rest of the world is usually left dumbfounded. Many (not all) poets and writers working out in the literary world today only write to impress journal editors, publishing houses, and other writers that are deemed “intelligent.”
This is one of the reasons why poetry has fallen out of sight; why poetry books are not seen on people's bookshelves anymore; and why when you mention the world 'poetry', many are deterred and intimidated by the mere idea that poetry is seen as only for the gifted and intelligent who wear wool vests and doze in their leather chairs while reading The Aeneid (10 points if you decipher that allusion). But every so often, a poet emerges into the art world to bring forth not highly figurative subject matter or Miltonic language, but instead gives the world an accessible avenue for enjoying and truly appreciating that widely declining art.
Amy Fleury is one of these poets. Fleury is a native of rural northeast Kansas and graduated from McNeese's MFA Creative Writing program several years back, and she is now an Associate Professor at Washburn University in Kansas. No one should feel intimidated while reading Fleury's poetry, but don't underestimate her work and deem it simple. Effortlessly she brings us into the rural heartland of her youth and lets us experience her girlhood as if it were our own. Her delicate language blends beautifully with the harsh and dignified way of life of the Midwest. Fleury's images of "sweet potato babies" flow through her stanzas and she leaves us "honey-rimmed on the mouths of men."
Fleury quickly stirs the memories of youth and finds herself wandering through your spirit as you read her first collection, Beautiful Trouble (2004). Beautiful Trouble is a breathless experience that leaves you wondering and dreaming of "baked lawns" and feeling the “itch of fire”, and you soon understand that her childhood has bled into your childhood and her images have become yours.
It's safe to say that Fleury outshines so many others and has admirably brought poetry back to the American audience through her soft and expansive language, her brutally visceral images of rural Midwest life, her youthful visions of humanity, and her memories that make you swear you had those exact same sensory exeriences. She is relatable, understandable, and speaks to your spirit without you even realizing it.
"Always Girl" from Beautiful Trouble, 2004
That girl,
always a string bean child
fretting at her mama's skirts.
Her time will come, sorry to say.
She trips across pasture tugging
that grubby-toed baby doll,
always blond, always girl.
She hides in the corncrib
that cradles puckered ears,
afraid of those kernels that hang
like brown teeth on wicked gums.
She spins, she spins, dizzy and silly.
That girl, she stands by the creek,
shivering ribs and bruised and bony knees,
sipping thimbles of sunshine, she does.
Soon she will wake from her moon-blessed sleep,
ripe with morning. That girl will find
stained panties and her own worried hems.
And on some porch, she will sit and sweat and squint
and shuck her corn with blistered thumbs.
She'll conjure thunder and shuck that corn.
