Welcome to Danny Caine’s ‘Flavortown’
In the opening to
Flavortown, a new collection of poetry from the Ohio-born Danny Caine, Guy Fieri discusses the genesis of the imagined metropolis, saying, “On camera, I once said, ‘This pizza looks like a manhole cover in Flavortown.’” Fieri then goes on to detail the ways the place has since taken on a life of its own, with fans approaching him and pledging to be city council members, or the town mechanic. “It doesn’t stop,” he continues. “What would be the airline of Flavortown? Sausage Airlines?”
Throughout
Flavortown, released via the independent, Columbus-based imprint Harpoon Books, Caine spends ample time within the donkey sauce-scented burgh. He imagines its citizenship test (“How much bacon is appropriate to put on a burger? Name three foods that require a stick when deep fried?”), checks in with the town doctor (an office visit during which the poem's narrator receives a fist bump for their ample beer consumption) and, in “Flavortown Gossip,” listens to the whispers of imagined residents discussing Fieri. “I heard he didn’t leave his house for days after the