Crying Dress: Poems

by Cassidy McFadzean

The poems in Crying Dress, acclaimed poet Cassidy McFadzean’s third collection, explore the multiplicity of meaning that arises from fragmentation, rhythm, competing sounds, and ellipsis. Rooted in the tradition of lyric poetry, these strikingly original poems revel in musicality (rhyme, beat, and alliteration) while deploying puns, idiom, and other forms of linguistic play to create a dissonance that challenges the expected coherence of a poem. From the ghosts and gardens of Brooklyn and Sicily to the clanging of garbage chutes in Uno Prii’s modernist high rises in Toronto, to quiet moments of intimacy in domestic spaces, and the early days of sobriety and grief, Crying Dress explores the intersections between noise and coherence, the conversational and the associative, the architectural and the ecological, while reaffirming the poet’s sonic, vertiginous lyricism and gift for overlooked detail.

Genres: Poetry

94 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 2, 2024

About the author

Cassidy McFadzean graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and currently lives in Toronto. She is the author of Hacker Packer, which won two Saskatchewan Book Awards and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and Drolleries.

Reviews

[Erica Lin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I attended a writer’s panel where Cassidy spoke about wordplay and the use of neologisms, and where I later got myself a signed copy of Crying Dress.

I have to admit many of these poems were difficult for me to understand. As a novice poetry reader I find it challenging to knit together seemingly disconnected images into a larger, more coherent one. I much prefer (at least at this stage) being told more explicitly what each poem is about. That being said, Cassidy’s use of rhythm and assonance rhyming schemes, along with the fun wordplay and word substitutions, created a musicality that made reading this collection fun.

Overall, I feel I got the vague sense of what each poem was describing, and I do feel I’ve broadened my scope reading this collection.

Highlighted poems:
• The Crown Was an End Stop
• Fun Fact or Conspiracy Theory
• Calyx of Held
• So This is What a Bed of Roses Feels Like

[Paul Vermeersch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crying Dress by Cassidy McFadzean is a jewel! The lines are alive with sonic exuberance and syntactic music. Reading it is sometimes like hearing an oboe solo in the next room and sometimes like feeling a subwoofer thumping under your palm.

[Babak · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I was bleeding in the bathtub at the start of the next decade
A toast to this and all other odds and eclogues
Was it maggot or magnets?
Static or stagnant? No matter—
we cherished each fragment clasped to our clavicles, tight”

[Chyx Xyng · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Crying Dress is a poetry collection about love and grief. It’s inevitable that these two emotions go together – to love means that one is opening oneself to the possibility of grief. There are some lighter moments too. I especially enjoy Cassidy’s descriptions of everyday objects as if they were living: “the train dry heaves beside the platform.”

[Lily Wang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calyx of Held, Veil of Cashmere, Knock on Wood, Poem with No Perspective, Elephant Tooth


“crying in the park due to memory”

“The year all our bad luck / coalesced like cloudberries / rising from their stalks”

some favourites but I enjoyed each poem!

[Margaryta · Rating 5 out of 5]

**review forthcoming in Arc Poetry Magazine**

[Sophie Crocker]

already excited to reread this !