How Do Americans Learn to be Americans? – Kathleen Flenniken

In a poetry reading and presentation, Kathleen will explore the messages of patriotism hidden inside some of her childhood memories using poems from both Plume (poems that center on growing up next to the Hanford Nuclear Site in Eastern Washington), and her new collection, Post Romantic. In examining these memories from a disenchanted adult perspective, she hopes to unpack the grief that has accompanied especially the last five years of our American experience, and her discomfort with the term “patriotism” as our contemporary culture continues to define it.

Kathleen Flenniken