Contact us on (02) 8445 2300
For all customer service and order enquiries

Woodslane Online Catalogues

9780821426685 Academic Inspection Copy

Midsummer Night's Toast

Poems
  • ISBN-13: 9780821426685
  • Publisher: OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Mamie Morgan
  • Price: AUD $46.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 01/04/1985
  • Format: Paperback (216.00mm X 152.00mm) 80 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: Poetry by individual poets [DCF]
Description
Author
Biography
Reviews
Google
Preview
Midsummer Night's Toast is a collection that answers to no one, a freedom we learn the speaker has finally afforded herself after a half-life spent under the glaring light of tradition, fear, of men, of institutions. She's answered to her parents, to students, to academia, shame, to the workshop model, to various earlier versions of herself and is ready-in short-to have a good time. The invite list for this particular party belongs entirely to her: friends, street names, Kelly Ripa inside a crossword puzzle, bounced checks, hurricanes and Marilyn Hacker, frat boys and birds, bridal shops, Chaucer, the pictures her husband draws, King Arthur, Adrienne Rich. She's sad for sure, and angry, but she's also fierce as fire. At times these poems feel hurried, because they are. The landscape of this book feels like that penultimate moment in When Harry Met Sally when Billy Crystal says, "When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." Mamie Morgan is reenacting a half-life of pain utilizing a kaleidoscope she's crafted from discarded paper, felt, cheap gemstones, crayons worn to nubs, and mixtapes. Lots of mixtapes.
Mamie Morgan's poems and essays have appeared in Oxford American, The Atlantic, Muzzle, Four Way Review, Sixth Finch, Carolina Quarterly, Smartish Pace, and elsewhere. Her first collection, Everyone I've Danced with Is Dead, was published by JackLeg in 2024. She lives in South Carolina with her husband and their dogs, Henrietta Modine and Wednesday Stewart.
"Midsummer Night's Toast is a book of relentless, headlong energy. These skillful and fiery poems, trapped between reverence for literary tradition and immense cynicism, stake out a wild and granular territory (one poem, for example, is titled "When my husband slides a record from Barbra Streisand's sleeve and it's actually The Best of Aerosmith"). These poems delve into tip work, into the service economy, into the endless scroll, into "the earnest century where you got paid per word"; they subvert our expectations of what is immediate, what is remote, what is familiar, what can never be pinned down. "[T]hey don't know about the poetry," the speaker announces to the reader, "how it sometimes makes things worse."" - Natalie Shapero, author of Popular Longing
Google Preview content