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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. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Oxford American, CALYX, Grist, Reckon Review, Cheap Pop, Appalachian Review, Feed, Ethel, and Chapter 16 among other places. She teaches communication studies and media writing to college students. She often teaches poetry and nonfiction writing classes for workshops and conferences.
Live Readings
Skip to 5:55 to hear her read "The Girl Singer"
Skip to 9:48 to hear her read "My Maternal People"
Poems
The Girl Singer
How hard it was to hold my body againstdefeat and come to be known as just a girl
singer by those men who said we're doingyou a big favor, honey. Once, I sang the lonely
songs I loved. The A-minor chord on my blackGibson hummed lonesome as a grave. I strummed
right through their promises Crying O!the dreadful wind and the rain. On stage I was
one notch below the gap-toothed hayseedin his checkered jacket and short pants clowning
around with me as his sidekick and we'd laughand laugh. I dug on your grave the better
part of last night. Too sorrowful, they said. The bossesheard enough about sick-hearted boys chasing
aggravating beauties, poor orphan children droppingand dying in the snow. War was over, they said.
Be old-fashioned but not too much. How hardit was to fetch my voice for chirpier songs.
Oh the cuckoo, she never hollers coo-coo. I woredown. I mourned the women killed in all the murder
ballads I knew - bludgeoned-stabbed-drowned-floateddownstream to the miller's cove. He made fiddle screws
from her little finger bones. I had to quit singing our songs.Her clothes all wet and muddy they laid her on a plank.
How hard it was to hold my body againstdefeat and come to be known as just a girl
singer by those men who said we're doingyou a big favor, honey. Once, I sang the lonely
songs I loved. The A-minor chord on my blackGibson hummed lonesome as a grave. I strummed
right through their promises Crying O!the dreadful wind and the rain. On stage I was
one notch below the gap-toothed hayseedin his checkered jacket and short pants clowning
around with me as his sidekick and we'd laughand laugh. I dug on your grave the better
part of last night. Too sorrowful, they said. The bossesheard enough about sick-hearted boys chasing
aggravating beauties, poor orphan children droppingand dying in the snow. War was over, they said.
Be old-fashioned but not too much. How hardit was to fetch my voice for chirpier songs.
Oh the cuckoo, she never hollers coo-coo. I woredown. I mourned the women killed in all the murder
ballads I knew - bludgeoned-stabbed-drowned-floateddownstream to the miller's cove. He made fiddle screws
from her little finger bones. I had to quit singing our songs.Her clothes all wet and muddy they laid her on a plank.
Barn Dance (Chorus)
Little Darlin's not my name Cathy Fink
It's not cousin, gal, honey, or sweetheart.Not little miss, little maid, little jo,
little shoe, little sunbonnet. Our namesaren't sister, girl, lady, or aunt. Listen.
We had to play like one of the boys - cards, drinking, jokes - to hold our own on radio,
at whistlestops, barn dances, schoolhouses, church meetings, and every blazing county
fair in all the states they used for our names: Montana, Louisiana, Texas.
Don't call us bluebird, songbird, nightingale, cricket. Not sunshine, moonshine, violet,
or sugar. Not brown eyes, black-eyed susie, daisy, or laughin' lindy. Listen. If you want
us, say the names our mothers gave us. Recall how we really were: rawboned,
standing spraddle-legged while weheadlined those mean stages.
Little Darlin's not my name Cathy Fink
It's not cousin, gal, honey, or sweetheart.Not little miss, little maid, little jo,
little shoe, little sunbonnet. Our namesaren't sister, girl, lady, or aunt. Listen.
We had to play like one of the boys - cards, drinking, jokes - to hold our own on radio,
at whistlestops, barn dances, schoolhouses, church meetings, and every blazing county
fair in all the states they used for our names: Montana, Louisiana, Texas.
Don't call us bluebird, songbird, nightingale, cricket. Not sunshine, moonshine, violet,
or sugar. Not brown eyes, black-eyed susie, daisy, or laughin' lindy. Listen. If you want
us, say the names our mothers gave us. Recall how we really were: rawboned,
standing spraddle-legged while weheadlined those mean stages.
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