Overview
The poems in Plume are nuclear-age songs of innocence and experience set in the ""empty"" desert West. Award-winning poet Kathleen Flenniken grew up in Richland, Washington, at the height of the Cold War, next door to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where ""every father I knew disappeared to fuel the bomb,"" and worked at Hanford herself as a civil engineer and hydrologist. By the late 1980s, declassified documents revealed decades of environmental contamination and deception at the plutonium production facility, contradicting a lifetime of official assurances to workers and their families that their community was and always had been safe. At the same time, her childhood friend Carolyn's own father was dying of radiation-induced illness: ""blood cells began to err one moment efficient the next / a few gone wrong stunned by exposure to radiation / as [he] milled uranium into slugs or swabbed down / train cars or reported to B Reactor for a quick run-in / run-out."" Plume, written twenty years later, traces this American betrayal and explores the human capacity to hold truth at bay when it threatens one's fundamental identity. Flenniken observes her own resistance to facts: ""one box contains my childhood / the other contains his death / if one is true / how can the other be true?"" The book's personal story and its historical one converge with enriching interplay and wide technical variety, introducing characters that range from Carolyn and her father to Italian physicist Enrico Fermi and Manhattan Project health physicist Herbert Parker. As a child of ""Atomic City,"" Kathleen Flenniken brings to this tragedy the knowing perspective of an insider coupled with the art of a precise, unflinching, gifted poet. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iSaR9mfeeM
Full Product Details
Author: Kathleen Flenniken
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Imprint: University of Washington Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 0.80cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.265kg
ISBN: 9780295999012
ISBN 10: 0295999012
Pages: 80
Publication Date: 21 September 2015
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
. . .quiet but damning poems on the history of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation . . . -- John Bradley * Rain Taxi * These poems are about delivered truth and the language of deceit. . . . Flenniken's special combination of scientific and poetic skill gives us a powerful and readable illustration of an ongoing disaster and official attempts to pretend nothing untoward is going on. -- Mary Cresswell * Plumwood Mountain * When it aims to, poetry can treat history in ways history books or photographs cannot: It drops us in our human skin into another time and place like no other medium. . . . Plume is difficult to put down and difficult to forget. -- Mike Dillon * City Living * Flenniken's award-winning collection of poems about Hanford. . . is a good way to enter the local landscape and mindset. * Seattle Times * Plume immerses you in an isolated society that abides by its own rules and sense of what's important. -- Mary Ann Gwinn * Seattle Times * Remarkable in its scope and stunning in its use of many poetic forms. . . This bold engagement with a variety of styles allows the poems to ricochet and resonate on the page as the poet's understanding of her past life deepens, drawing the reader into an ever more complex web of personal memory and national history. -- Linda Andrews * Poetry Northwest * Plume is an excellent example of how documentary poetry can blend the personal impulse toward nostalgia with the journalistic imperative for objectivity, and the result is a stunning multifaceted take on this public tragedy. -- Susan B. A. Somes-Willett * Orion * Not only an education about Washington State and its role in the Nuclear Age but of an awakening in the American public as well as the poet herself to the peculiar dangers of invisible poisons and of trusting too much the authorities of science and government. -- Jeannine Hall Gailey * The Rumpus * Washington state's new Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken gives an elegantly rendered example of another of [John] Morgan's dicta that 'poetry gives form to our feelings and helps us come to terms with them.'. -- Barbara Lloyd McMichael * The Bellingham Herald * Many of the poems wrestle with the bomb factory's legacy of environmental contamination, illness and even death from exposure to radiation. But she also wrote them to honor the people she grew up with. -- Mary Ann Gwinn * The Seattle Times *
These poems are about delivered truth and the language of deceit.... Flenniken's special combination of scientific and poetic skill gives us a powerful and readable illustration of an ongoing disaster and official attempts to pretend nothing untoward is going on.--Mary Cresswell Plumwood Mountain (01/01/2014)
...quiet but damning poems on the history of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation ... -- John Bradley Rain Taxi These poems are about delivered truth and the language of deceit... Flenniken's special combination of scientific and poetic skill gives us a powerful and readable illustration of an ongoing disaster and official attempts to pretend nothing untoward is going on. -- Mary Cresswell Plumwood Mountain When it aims to, poetry can treat history in ways history books or photographs cannot: It drops us in our human skin into another time and place like no other medium... Plume is difficult to put down and difficult to forget. -- Mike Dillon City Living Flenniken's award-winning collection of poems about Hanford... is a good way to enter the local landscape and mindset. Seattle Times Remarkable in its scope and stunning in its use of many poetic forms... This bold engagement with a variety of styles allows the poems to ricochet and resonate on the page as the poet's understanding of her past life deepens, drawing the reader into an ever more complex web of personal memory and national history. -- Linda Andrews Poetry Northwest Plume is an excellent example of how documentary poetry can blend the personal impulse toward nostalgia with the journalistic imperative for objectivity, and the result is a stunning multifaceted take on this public tragedy. -- Susan B. A. Somes-Willett Orion Not only an education about Washington State and its role in the Nuclear Age but of an awakening in the American public as well as the poet herself to the peculiar dangers of invisible poisons and of trusting too much the authorities of science and government. -- Jeannine Hall Gailey The Rumpus Washington state's new Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken gives an elegantly rendered example of another of [John] Morgan's dicta that 'poetry gives form to our feelings and helps us come to terms with them.'. -- Barbara Lloyd McMichael The Bellingham Herald Many of the poems wrestle with the bomb factory's legacy of environmental contamination, illness and even death from exposure to radiation. But she also wrote them to honor the people she grew up with. -- Mary Ann Gwinn The Seattle Times
"". . .quiet but damning poems on the history of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation . . ."" - John Bradley (Rain Taxi) ""These poems are about delivered truth and the language of deceit. . . . Flenniken's special combination of scientific and poetic skill gives us a powerful and readable illustration of an ongoing disaster and official attempts to pretend nothing untoward is going on."" - Mary Cresswell (Plumwood Mountain) ""When it aims to, poetry can treat history in ways history books or photographs cannot: It drops us in our human skin into another time and place like no other medium. . . . Plume is difficult to put down and difficult to forget."" - Mike Dillon (City Living) ""Flenniken's award-winning collection of poems about Hanford. . . is a good way to enter the local landscape and mindset."" (Seattle Times) ""Remarkable in its scope and stunning in its use of many poetic forms. . . This bold engagement with a variety of styles allows the poems to ricochet and resonate on the page as the poet's understanding of her past life deepens, drawing the reader into an ever more complex web of personal memory and national history."" - Linda Andrews (Poetry Northwest) ""Plume immerses you in an isolated society that abides by its own rules and sense of what's important."" - Mary Ann Gwinn (Seattle Times) ""Plume is an excellent example of how documentary poetry can blend the personal impulse toward nostalgia with the journalistic imperative for objectivity, and the result is a stunning multifaceted take on this public tragedy."" - Susan B. A. Somes-Willett (Orion) ""Not only an education about Washington State and its role in the Nuclear Age but of an awakening in the American public as well as the poet herself to the peculiar dangers of invisible poisons and of trusting too much the authorities of science and government."" - Jeannine Hall Gailey (The Rumpus) ""Washington state's new Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken gives an elegantly rendered example of another of [John] Morgan's dicta that 'poetry gives form to our feelings and helps us come to terms with them.'."" - Barbara Lloyd McMichael (The Bellingham Herald) ""Many of the poems wrestle with the bomb factory's legacy of environmental contamination, illness and even death from exposure to radiation. But she also wrote them to honor the people she grew up with."" - Mary Ann Gwinn (The Seattle Times)
...quiet but damning poems on the history of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation... -- John Bradley Rain Taxi These poems are about delivered truth and the language of deceit... Flenniken's special combination of scientific and poetic skill gives us a powerful and readable illustration of an ongoing disaster and official attempts to pretend nothing untoward is going on. -- Mary Cresswell Plumwood Mountain When it aims to, poetry can treat history in ways history books or photographs cannot: It drops us in our human skin into another time and place like no other medium... Plume is difficult to put down and difficult to forget. -- Mike Dillon City Living Remarkable in its scope and stunning in its use of many poetic forms... This bold engagement with a variety of styles allows the poems to ricochet and resonate on the page as the poet's understanding of her past life deepens, drawing the reader into an ever more complex web of personal memory and national history. -- Linda Andrews Poetry Northwest Plume is an excellent example of how documentary poetry can blend the personal impulse toward nostalgia with the journalistic imperative for objectivity, and the result is a stunning multifaceted take on this public tragedy. -- Susan B. A. Somes-Willett Orion Not only an education about Washington State and its role in the Nuclear Age but of an awakening in the American public as well as the poet herself to the peculiar dangers of invisible poisons and of trusting too much the authorities of science and government. -- Jeannine Hall Gailey The Rumpus Washington state's new Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken gives an elegantly rendered example of another of [John] Morgan's dicta that 'poetry gives form to our feelings and helps us come to terms with them.'. -- Barbara Lloyd McMichael The Bellingham Herald Many of the poems wrestle with the bomb factory's legacy of environmental contamination, illness and even death from exposure to radiation. But she also wrote them to honor the people she grew up with. -- Mary Ann Gwinn The Seattle Times
Author Information
Kathleen Flenniken is the author of two poetry collections: Plume (University of Washington Press, 2012), a meditation on the Hanford Nuclear Site and her hometown of Richland, Washington, won the Washington State Book Award and was a finalist for the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Pacific Northwest Book Awards. Her first book, Famous (University of Nebraska Press, 2006), won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association. Kathleen's awards include a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Artist Trust. She served as Washington State Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. Kathleen holds an MFA degree in creative writing from Pacific Lutheran University, as well as bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering. She lives in Seattle.
