THE GIRL SINGER
Description
Feminism, Appalachian culture, and country music: three threads beautifully woven into one in Marianne Worthington’s poetry collection The Girl Singer.
The poet grew up in urban Appalachia, listening to country and folk music and letting it live within her. The speakers in The Girl Singer offer lyrical celebrations of the women who performed that music and recite their stories anew. The girl singer is also the poet—one who traces loss through turning seasons, monitors the patterns of neighborhood wildlife, and creates a sisterhood for singing old songs in new ways.
The Girl Singer is part family history, part music, and part nature walk. Worthington’s attentive eye and heart are reflected in the starkly striking and painful images she paints in the poems. Every poem, whether describing a connection with Appalachian wildlife, retelling the lyrics of a classic country tune, reflecting on the speaker’s bloodline, or giving voice to famous musical figures of the past, strikes a powerful chord.
PRAISE FOR THE GIRL SINGER
“These poems hit the ear like rain on a tin roof and summon a world that’s heartfelt and true, because the things of that world, from the human music right down to the birds, belong to each other and to the wondrous world itself.” — Maurice Manning, author of Railsplitter and One Man’s Dark
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Marianne Worthington is a poet, editor, and cofounder of Still: The Journal. She lives and teaches in southeastern Kentucky. Her work has appeared in Oxford American, CALYX, Grist, Cheap Pop, Chapter 16 and other outlets. She coedited Piano in a Sycamore: Writing Lessons from the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop and is author of a poetry chapbook.
by Marianne Worthington
Length: 76 pages
Released: November 2021
