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Marcia Southwick
A SATURDAY NIGHT
AT THE FLYING DOG & OTHER POEMS


Winner of the 1998 FIELD Poetry Prize

Paper $13.95
(ISBN 0-932440-85-1)

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High-spirited and unpredictable, Marcia Southwick's third collection is, among other things, a remarkable mirror of our place and time. With unrelenting curiosity and brio, she reflects our materialistic, shopping-obsessed, informationally-exploding, and deeply confused culture right back at us, showing us the world we live in with unflinching honesty and compassionate affection.

"Southwick's poems are funny and touching, sparked by her gift for expression and her expert use of collage and mimicry, but they are also memorable in their quest to see us all, ultimately, in terms of our spiritual searches and our deeper needs. If we are lost souls, Southwick shows us how hilarious our dilemmas can be and how here, at the end of the century, we flail around attempting to deal with them. This is a book to treasure, read aloud from, and share with friends."
--David Young

 

DOROTHY AND TOTO IN NEW YORK

Dorothy, scooped up by a tornado, plop--lands on the Fifth Avenue
doorstep of Eileen Ford's Modeling Agency, her make-up looking
like toxic sludge & her hair like kudzo swallowing a barn in summer.
Toto, a blind white mutt w/ black circle around his eye--who noses his way
through alfafa, or hops up steps, turning left for the kitchen & his bowl,
without bumping into walls--cowers near Dorothy, his nerves
rattling like dice in a cup. The door opens & Dorothy learns the book-
on-your-head walk, the hip-swivel & hair-toss. She learns to hate men
who say, "You gotta call my agent when you get to L.A.," or "Let's
get a cupp'la stogies & a pint bottle of Double Black Stout."
(Their charm is linear & superficial--more persona than personality--
except when undressed for success.) She forgets Kansas--her aunt's
purple Cabbage Rose wallpaper, raisin pie, & oakleaf lettuce--
her uncle's handmade bits & spurs and classic Don Dodge snaffle.
She forgets how easy it was to make worn-out boots into bird houses.
Once she preferred a good britchen to a crupper--a britchen keeps
the saddle from moving forward, but unlike a crupper, a britchen turns
the horse's entire hindquarters rather than just the tail. Now she forgets
what a crupper is, & also the ten-pound leeks at the county fair. A long way
from clotheslines in the back yard, she's all chit-chat, cognac,
weekend tee-shots over the dune--all Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall,
& politically correct faux-fur. She's all pate imported from Paris,
stone crabs from Miami, violin concerts in glass-enclosed pergolas,
& purebred Irish Setters. Alas, poor Toto! He sniffs Central Park
benches (& grassy patches like home) for Dorothy but can't catch
her scent, masked by Paul Mitchell hairspray & Coco Chanel. Toto--
a shaggy mutt so far from his alfafa & his bowl, so far from his back
yard in Kansas with the smell of laundry flapping on the line, & sunflowers
that, unbeknownst to him, turned their heads to follow the arc of the sun.

--Marcia Southwick

Copyright c 1999 by Oberlin College. May not be reproduced without permission.


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