Beautiful Trouble

Back Cover

 “Amy Fleury’s Beautiful Trouble sips ‘thimbles of sunshine,’ feeds ‘honey-rimmed on the mouths of men,’ feels ‘the itch of fire,’ and wants ‘a sweet potato baby.’ These are troubles beautiful as plain days distilled to the wonder seed.”—Kim Stafford, author of The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft “The minute I finished Beautiful Trouble, I wished I had copies to give to all my friends: To the poets, of course, who will admire it for its art, but also to those who don’t read poetry. Fleury proves that a book of poems need not be baffling or condescending or self-absorbed. With ordinary words placed with perfect precision, this book throws open dozens of windows onto fresh new ways of seeing, and loving, the world.”—Ted Kooser, author of Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps “Like the persona in her poem ‘When the Dancing is Done,’ Amy Fleury’s poems ‘whirl and wheel’ in a mesmerizing joyful abandon of assonance and alliteration. These are tender poems full of harsh beauty and compassion giving the reader a world both ‘blighted and blessed,’ where there is ‘trouble all around and everywhere little mercies.’ Though Fleury knows ‘we’ll find no charm against calamity,’ she also knows that ‘the dark architecture of the heart/ is buttressed by sternum, girded by ribs [and that] we build our lives from its very trembling.’ Fleury is a ‘pilgrim from the plains’ sailing into the ‘beautiful trouble/ of this world,’ bringing with her a rare and magical sensibility, a lyric intensity that is nearly hypnotic and wondrous love of the sheer beauty and joy of language.”—Judy Jordan, author of Carolina Ghost Woods A native of rural northeast Kansas, Amy Fleury earned an M.F.A. from McNeese State University and has held the Nadya Aisenberg Fellowship at the MacDowell Colony. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals, including Southern Poetry Review, North American Review, st, Laurel Review, South Dakota Review, and Prairie Schooner. She is an associate professor of English at Washburn University and the managing editor of Woodley Memorial Press in Topeka, Kansas. C R A B O R C h A R D S E R i E S i N P O E T R y — F i R S T B O O k A W A R D Southern Illinois University Press 1915฀univi฀฀div฀ ail฀cd฀6806฀฀฀฀฀candal,฀il฀6901-6806 www.siu.edu/~siupress Cover design: Erin Kirk New Cover illustration: Digital Vision Photography Printed in the United States of America a฀ac ISBN 0-8093-2598-5 ISBN 978-0-8093-2598-6 ...