Starkey Flythe, Jr. graduated from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennesssee, served with the army in the Middle East and Africa, and was re-founding and managing editor of the Curtis Publishing Company magazines, Holiday and The Saturday Evening Post. He has taught in public high schools in Georgia, South Carolina, and Indiana, and his stories have been anthologized in the Best American, New Stories from the South, and O. Henry collections. His book of short fiction, Lent: The Slow Fast,was published by the University of Iowas Press in 1990. He is a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, and this book is his third collection of poetry.
The Futile Lesson of Glue will be available soon.
Reviews:
A tour de force of a hard-bitten poem, Starkey Flythe’s wry take on postage stamps is really about history, abbreviated as “the South . . . the soil . . . the past.” No surprise to those of us who are familar with his earlier work, the poems in The Futile Lesson of Glue, “essentially,” he says, “are about how things can’t be put back together,” and sadden and pleasure the reader with his flashes of vivid insight. This is a book to treasure. ––Maxine Kumin
I’ve been a fan of Starkey Flythe’s poetry for a long time. His poems have precision and natural eloquence. His passion is subdued, yet it is the deepest echo of his art. ––Pat Conroy
Starkey Flythe’s inimitable voice stutter-steps its way to wisdom and wit, leaving all of us––readers and writers alike––marveling at his ability to locate and express the vitality of any moment, object, or person. His titles speak volumes about this knack: “August, in your navy whites, sitting down on a chocolate bar”; “Sophia Loren eyeing Jayne Mansfield’s bosom”; “Men walking across the bridge to sell their blood.” We are given, as Flythe says of Michelangelo, “the beautiful broken by the maker of beauty”––with the broken beauty itself rendered new and numinous. ––Stephen Corey
Does any poet write like Starkey Flythe, Jr.––so witty and urbane, more than happy, if need be, to bat around pop culture references or to address a Pharaoh intimately as “Tut,” nimble in leading you through his maze-like meditations, the voice sometimes halting, backing up, correcting itself, before venturing on? It’s a gracious voice that stops to point things out along the way because he doesn’t want you to miss them. But it has a bite, too: be forewarned. His work reminds us of all of poetry’s pleasure. It’s always a pleasure to read him. ––James Smith
"He awakens us and asks us to re-think and re-feel what we have thought and felt to be true in language that is both fresh and familiar, crafted and free."
Dr. John Z. Guzlowski
Professor Emeritus
Eastern Illinois University
Author of Lighting and Ashes
Starkey Flythe, Winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, 2009
