Issue 12, October 1997
John Carle - Review

In her publication biography, Fanny-Min Becker describes herself as a "lover of what life has to offer, devoted wife, mother of three and more, friend, homemaker, teacher, writing/reading fan, student, roughly in that order".

That domestic flavor is evident in fleeting, which reads like a verbal mosaic of daily life around the house and Becker's adopted city of Dusseldorf. It is a range of subjects that seems to suit Becker's style - in its short, quiet lines the book reminds me of Carolyn Forché's Gathering the Tribes. The trick is not to be lulled by the settings of home, either German or Becker's native Chinese, because just when you do, the author steps outside and her voice becomes that of a young German girl during the Nazi regime.

	Through the
	Dark long tunnel
	Of an unforgettable past

	She came

	Flying in my dream
	A halo on
	Her head
	Flapping her black wings

	She came

	And froze
	My mother's last kiss
	On my sweating forehead

		- "A Told Untold Tale"

"A Told Untold Tale" illustrates both a strength and a weakness of Becker's. The weakness is her tendency to footnote, which is helpful, of course, when a poem is in German or when one needs to know, as I did, that the "Kastanie" in "A Heidelberg Story" is a chestnut tree. The five-line footnote to "Tale", though, spells out the entire setting of the poem when, for my money, I would rather have the opportunity to envision the meaning as it appears in my own head.

No matter, though. The strength evident in "Tale" is Becker's ability to observe and write about children - and conversely, her ability to write as a child about the world around her. My favorite poem of Becker's is still the first one I had the opportunity to publish in Gravity: "Kindheit", or "Childhood". The poem only has eight lines, but read the first couplet and you're off.

	To Leslie's Pink Floyd Music
	He dances on the rooftop

Much of fleeting, a very handsome chap of 58 pages and 49 poems, is about rites of passage, if you will and as you might expect from the title. Becker herself describes the book as "a collection of fleeting highs and lows of life". Sort of, well, suburban on the surface of the thing, but don't be fooled. Becker has more on her mind than what The Beaver and Wally are up to now.

You can email Fanny-Min Becker for information on ordering fleeting.