Miss America

by Catherine Wagner

"The poems of Catherine Wagner are instantly sacramental, immediately mysterious. Showing songlines to Spicer's profanity and to Zukofsky's purest register, they move through musics entirely their own. There, MISS AMERICA finds a world wide-open but unharmed. There, Wagner proves the wisdom of divided hearts. She is a mage and a marvel. I believe she is our best."
--Donald Russell

Genres: Poetry

68 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Catherine Wagner teaches creative writing at Miami University in Ohio. Her publications include Macular Hole (Fence Books, 2004), Imitating (Leafe Press, 2004), Exercises (811 Books, 2004), Miss America (Fence Books, 2001). Individual poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Black Clock, Chicago Review, Fence, Five Fingers Review, New Review, and Soft Targets, among others, and in several anthologies including Isn’t It Romantic: 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets, (Verse Press 2004). She’s working on a new book of poems, and editing two anthologies, both to appear in 2007 from Fence: one of poems by mothers and another entitled A Poetry and Politics Primer.

Reviews

[Matt Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been savoring this for a few years now, and I'm finally done (just in time to check out her new book).

This is one of those bucket-of-water-in-the-face books that makes you excited about poetry again (if you were feeling not-so-good about poetry previously, which probably happens to any normal (or abnormal) human from time to time).

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book changed my life. Really. My friend Tim let me borrow it, and not to sound too cheesy, but reading it made me feel driven to work. I really worked (am working) to become a poet because of this book. For a while I desparately imitated Cathy's style, but couldn't come close. The poems are unbelievably hip, but they also have the depth and resonance that makes you unconsciously memorize the lines and find them becoming a way into thinking about sex, gender roles, economics, the division of labor in the house, etc. I've had the book for five or six years now and still reread it whenever I need to get plugged back into poetry, to feel necessity.

[Juliet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoying this with that weird kind of enjoyment relationship I experience with many FENCE books, in which I feel like maybe I shouldn't be enjoying it so much, especially the childishly scatological aspects, but I'm enjoying it very much anyway and it catalyzed me to write three new poems.

[Kristine · Rating 5 out of 5]

i (heart) catherine wagner's poetry.

[cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

nicely done, creative, tight, but sometimes I grow weary of the "hip" tone of poems lately. I love irony, don't get me wrong, but does everyone have to be so "cool."

[Lightsey]

This little book is a blast. Never mind that it's not really my sort of poetics (where's the punctuation?), I'm just reeling along in Wagner's wake. There's a lot of "oh no she didn't!" here (sample: "If I was President, / NONSTOP LICKY / I'm afraid I can't think without licky"), and then it's just a pleasure to open a book to the line "Still asleep in its bunny". I think I would go a little ways to hear Wagner read.

[Allison Talbot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good, but not as accomplished as her later work.