Flowers does for me what a John Ashbery collection does: mystifies,
stifles, and causes a desire to mimic, leaving with it the eventual personal
failure to do so. These are signs of great poetry. Killebrew succeeds in creating
comic and anecdotal lines without tripping over them or making them
hip. He dares to write about what he had for breakfast, his hometown, and
of course, John Ashbery himself. His long poem "Forget Rita," previously published in chapbook form by Ugly Duckling Presse, is a true beauty.