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Beautiful Trouble
In her first collection of poems, Kansas native Amy Fleury captures images of dragging clotheslines, baked lawns, and sweet potato babies, inserting them with an earnest dignity into her stories of midwestern life. Beautiful Trouble explores the subtleties of landscape, place, families, girlhood, womanhood, and everyday existence on the prairie. Fleury writes of the Midwest with authenticity, speaks of romance with delicate allure, and recalls the heartbreak of childhood without self-pity. In meditations on resilience and life’s contradictions, Fleury engages her characters fully and paints their souls and sensations evenly in language both rare and beautiful. She is a poet in love with sound and its power to summon majesty from quotidian scenes. Her poems are brief and striking, depending on exquisite word choice and balance to achieve a simple order on the page.
- GenresPoetry
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 5, 2009
Amy Fleury's use of language here is amazing. All her poems are interwoven with plants, animals and land-rhythms of the Midwest while zinging you with the smart and sassy insights of a woman who knows what time it is and how to invite you to the picnic. Do come!
June 8, 2018
I deeply love this book. Meditations on one's place in the Midwest mingle with contemplations of childhood and declarations of peace--will read it again soon. Amy Fleury is one of the most generous individuals I know, steadfast in her support of poets and poetry, and a good friend. I eagerly await her next work.
August 11, 2022
The poet is a native of rural northeast Kansas. Her background is evident in her poems when she writes about westward expansion and prairie burning. She also writes of young girls developing into womanhood. One of her most poignant poems in the collection is Elegy for the Living, an insightful piece on grief. Lovers of poetry should definitely read this collection.
February 29, 2024
The poetry is beautiful and depicts a slow living. The poems take life’s little things to be grandiose and worthy. I enjoyed the writing overall and can picture the midwest immensely. I purchased this collection solely for the poem titled “At Twenty-eight” so that I could read it on my 28th birthday. It was delightful!
June 7, 2023
I would be happy to be a poet like Amy -- and so nice too!
December 24, 2023
A beautiful collection of poems about girlhood, growing up in a small town and never really leaving, regretting some choices and feeling solace in others.
December 11, 2009
Amy Fleury, Beautiful Trouble (Southern Illinois University Press, 2004)
I wasn't quite sure what to make of Beautiful Trouble, the 2004 Crab Orchard First Book Award winner, for the first few pages. Once I got into the rhythm of Amy Fleury's poetry, however, it was like a wire tripped in my head, and I devoured the rest of the book in one sitting. Fleury is at her best in the last section of the book, where her triple obsessions of sensuality, rural life, and time all converge:
“Once again we stumble out
of sheet tangle and the dross of dreams.
Daylight comes in little sips
over the lip of the bitter cup.
It is enough to sustain us.
It is enough to know that
we will go out again
with all our failings and loose change,
dazzled and hopeful
in the splendor of the sun.”
(“Aubade”)
Solid stuff, worth reading, with a real honesty to it: this is unvarnished in the best of ways, like a bare floor capable of giving you splinters, but still attractive enough that you refuse to carpet it. *** ½
I wasn't quite sure what to make of Beautiful Trouble, the 2004 Crab Orchard First Book Award winner, for the first few pages. Once I got into the rhythm of Amy Fleury's poetry, however, it was like a wire tripped in my head, and I devoured the rest of the book in one sitting. Fleury is at her best in the last section of the book, where her triple obsessions of sensuality, rural life, and time all converge:
“Once again we stumble out
of sheet tangle and the dross of dreams.
Daylight comes in little sips
over the lip of the bitter cup.
It is enough to sustain us.
It is enough to know that
we will go out again
with all our failings and loose change,
dazzled and hopeful
in the splendor of the sun.”
(“Aubade”)
Solid stuff, worth reading, with a real honesty to it: this is unvarnished in the best of ways, like a bare floor capable of giving you splinters, but still attractive enough that you refuse to carpet it. *** ½
July 7, 2009
Amy Fleury is a Kansas native, and she sure talks a lot about the plains, wheat, and sky in this collection of poetry. She also writes about the perils of girlhood, singleness, and womanhood. Many of her poems begins to sound similar after a time. My favorite poem in this collection, "The Fugitive Eve," retells the story of the fall of mankind with lines like
And with the original chill of delight
and shame, she is on the lam,
...stumbling out
of the garden, out of the numb perfection
of before into the brilliant and difficult ever-after.
And with the original chill of delight
and shame, she is on the lam,
...stumbling out
of the garden, out of the numb perfection
of before into the brilliant and difficult ever-after.
October 27, 2007
Fleury has a way with language, there's no two ways about it. A number of the poems in this collection are mawkish girl-power pieces that read like microwaved Lilith Fair liner notes. But others are nothing short of exceptional: "The Progress of Night" is probably my favorite, but "Papier-Mâché Jupiter," "Aurelia Waiting," "Homestead," "Backroad," "The Fugitive Eve," and "The Wound You Need" are lovely, too. I can't wait to see her next book.
May 23, 2013
Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. I've never lived in the Midwest, but these poems left me parched and windblown, like I'd been dropped in a Willa Cather novel. There was also a lovely narrative arc to the whole collection, moving from girlhood to middle age and beyond to the indelible. I love what Fleury does with sound, too. A lot of internal rhyme and alliteration. I'm excited to read more of her work!
June 4, 2010
Beautiful, graspable poems. Trouble to put down, and I admit it's hard for me to get through a whole book of poems in a sitting (or a week). A lot of the poems are about girls and/or small towns (ie my life), but they are smart and varied enough that it stays engaging.
Basically, this is what I'd write if I knew how to.
(Amy is just as lovely, and fun, in person.)
Basically, this is what I'd write if I knew how to.
(Amy is just as lovely, and fun, in person.)
September 28, 2011
Beautiful Trouble is a collection of approachable and melodic poems that aim to identify the Kansas prarie Americana that people harbored on either coast misjudge and misinterpret (this fool included). Fleury's lines are comfortably crafted, and draw the reader with the poet throughout the sequence of celebration and trepidation of life's most common secrets.
March 2, 2009
I am always curious about books that are so overt in staking out a literal territory for the speaker's identity. I like to think that these poems, which start on Kansas, are suddenly more American, or that they mark an American style.
November 18, 2010
This is a beautiful and poignant book of poetry. I had the distinct privilege of working with Amy when I went to college (my degree is in Creative Writing and she was my professor for several classes). I think she is extremely talented.
March 20, 2011
Amy Fleury weaves the landscape of her native Kansas throughout this book, not only in descrptive lines, but in her imagery and metaphor. Her word choices and lines sing a lovely harmony. Underlying even the serious poems is an exuberance that can't be contained.
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January 13, 2022What I didn't like: It lacked magic and oomph.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews