Marianne Worthington

The Girl Singer: Readings, etc.

“As the title suggests, musical performance supplies narrative material in Worthington’s debut; so does Worthington’s female-specific, Appalachian experience. The political sphere is present in flickers, in, say, a grandfather’s xenophobic World War II racism or (in the title poem) violence against women, where the ‘girl singer’ mourns ‘the women killed in all the murder / ballads I knew.’ Shorter lyrics animated by metaphor startle.”
-Daisy Fried for The New York Times

ABOUT The Girl Singer

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

“Poetry is always looking for voices from the wilderness, and with her country music cool, Southeastern Kentucky’s Marianne Worthington is a fitting, masterful voice for Appalachia.”
~Foreword Reviews

“Patsy Cline, The Carter Sisters, Hazel Dickens, the long-dead Laura Foster—Marianne Worthington conjures them all in a stunning assemblage of voices ranging from legendary to lost, silenced and misunderstood. The result is resonant and resplendent. Sketch a map that we can sing, Worthington writes in her final poem, and that’s precisely what she’s managed in this pitch-perfect collection.”
—Sonja Livingston, author of The Virgin of Prince Street
and Ghostbread

“In this lively and indelible collection, where the dead stay dancing and the crows are full of quarrel, where hands might be covered in blood or guitar calluses, Marianne Worthington’s hypnotic rhythms and dazzling images transport us to barn dances, the Ryman, kitchen tables, backyard bird feeders, Knoxville living rooms lit by the TV glow. Reverent of the thin places and defiant in their joy, these poems ‘strum and pluck, vibrate and ring.’ The voice of The Girl Singer is high, clear, and true. ”
— Erin Keane, Editor in Chief, Salon.com

“The book of poems you hold in your hands is both a history and a hymnal, full of the sounds of the southern mountains: a grandmother singing to charm a skittish dog, the classic country voices of the Grand Ole Opry, the unlovely and essential songs of jaybirds and crows, and the pilfered ballads of the mockingbird. Like the poet herself, The Girl Singer is funny, heartbreaking, unsentimental and wise. It’s as pitch-perfect a book as I have read in a long time. “
—Doug Van Gundy, author of A Life Above Water

“Lit-up and melancholy, these poems inhabit and reanimate the old songs, the ballads and fiddle tunes of the original mountain music that has no beginning and shows no sign of ending soon. Murder ballads, roaming, and redemption are all here with pining refrain. But then the book opens like a dogwood blossom to capture the music of childhood and family, as if a life of learning and wonder, love and loss is bounded by song. And so it is. 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

“The Girl Singer is a praise song, love song, rage song, ballad, recitative, and lament for early country music singers costumed, renamed, packaged, and sold; for the poet’s mother, who filmed a teenage Dolly Parton singing in a gas station parking lot; the poet’s father, caught in paralysis and a fading mind; for the musicians—country and soul—who were the soundtrack of her growing up; and for the glory of being in the audience at the Ryman when Bobby Bare kissed Marty Stuart. Worthington reclaims these beloveds, along with her ‘maternal people’ and her grandmothers, with whom she is ‘encircled now, all// living together.’ She restores her parents to their beginning—and hers—as we go with them to the Opry on their honeymoon. Through multiple forms—fixed and invented—she renders these moments. And by turns her singing words dazzle and cleave our hearts.
—George Ella Lyon, Kentucky Poet Laureate, 2015-2016

READINGS, ETC.

Conversation with Silas House: Reading/Signing
January 12, 2022; 7 p.m.
Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Lexington

Book Launch/Reading
November 17, 7:30 p.m.
Wrigley Taproom & Eatery
Corbin, KY

Read Spotted Newt
November 13, 1 p.m.
Reading w/ Jayne Moore Waldrop
Hazard, KY

Delcamp Visiting Writer
November 10, 5 p.m.
Transylvania University

Kentucky Book Festival
November 6, 2021
Lexington, KY

Southern Festival of Books
October, 9, 2021 (virtual)
Reading w/ Janisse Ray
and Destiny O. Birdsong