29 November 2006 | Vol. 6, No. 3

A Review of Kathleen Flenniken's Famous

by JEREMY HATCH

Famous
Kathleen Flenniken
University of Nebraska Press, 2006.
76 pages. $17.95.
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The third volume to emerge from the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and the first collection of its author's work, Famous is an assured and refreshingly self-possessed volume of poems, a rich offering of plain but musical language and understated irony, with a single formal piece thrown in for spice—or perhaps just to show that Kathleen Flenniken can do a pantoum as ably as anyone. With such a title, one would expect fame to be the overriding theme of the fifty-one poems collected here, and although it is indeed present in flashes, like snapshots taken from quirky angles, Flenniken seems more concerned with the opposite of fame: daily life, domestic moments, the ordinary objects of ordinary lives, and moments of intense privacy. The poems alternately present witty extended metaphors à la Billy Collins, vignettes of quotidian life as the poet knows it, and an imaginative rendering of quotidian life as certain minor figures in poetry, literature, politics, and history may have known it.

The opening poem, "The League of Minor Characters," is a perfect example of the first genre mentioned above. Flenniken begins by listing all the people "the main character" has lost, and continues:

When his doctor calls with test results, most of us
decide to remain minor characters

like the quixotic neighbor growing
bonsai sequoias, or the waitress with thick
glasses and a passion for chess,

because the main character, in the thrall
of a relentless plot, can't help hurtling toward
the crumbling cliff edge. And who needs that?

Who indeed? And yet we are often forced into the main character's role, as is implied in a later poem, "The International House of Pancakes." The speaker considers stopping in at the restaurant for a late breakfast, to eke the morning out a bit longer. She is nervous for good reason:

I've got a reservation at the hospital next door
which I'm pretending is a Ramada,
that I'm just another jittery traveler

with overnight case and toothbrush.
I could pull in, add to this lump
in my stomach. It's a good place to go

if you're a stranger, alone, almost forty
and late to see the world. The menu unfolds
like a map and for a moment your trip

feels intentional.

These poems are routinely surprising, filled with memorable imagery and delightful comparisons tha