World's Tallest Disaster

by Cate Marvin

Cate Marvin uses language the way a gymnast uses her body; she is a formalist who has thoroughly learned the pleasures and gains of abandon. But it is her excursions into wild image and passionate song that win the reader's heart. The heart is central in World's Tallest Disaster , which is essentially a book of love poems—love lost and found, love requited, love abandoned and betrayed. What Cate Marvin has done in her remarkably assured and powerful first collection is to remind us in fresh terms of the news that stays that our desire is "Not a sea of longing,// but the brack of wanting what's physical/ to help us forget we are physical." "Violently passionate and firmly symmetrical, like tango or the blues, these poems-at first-are about sexual passion. . . . But in the great tradition of love poetry, these poems don't stop with love. They move from eros to imagination. Or they thrash between the two. . . . This is an encouraging book in the context of American poetry's fashions or factions, because it evades categories. [Marvin's] is an urgent as well as an artful voice."—from the Foreword by Robert Pinsky Marketing Plans o Author tour in Ohio, Kentucky, and NYC
o Brochure and postcard mailings
o Advertisements in key literary and trade magazines Book tour dates
o Cincinnati
o Louisville
o New York City Cate Marvin was born in Washington, D.C. She received her B.A. from Marlboro College in Vermont, and holds two one from the University of Houston in poetry, the other from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in fiction. She has been awarded scholarships to attend both Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences. Her poems have appeared in such magazines as New England Review, The Antioch Review, The Paris Review, The Georgia Review, and Ploughshares, among others. She is lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English at the university there.

Genres: Poetry, Feminism

64 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2001

About the author

Cate Marvin's first book, World's Tallest Disaster, was chosen by Robert Pinksy for the 2000 Kathryn A. Morton Prize and published by Sarabande Books in 2001. In 2002, she received the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize. Her poems have appeared in The New England Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Fence, The Paris Review, The Cincinnati Review, Slate, Verse, Boston Review, and Ninth Letter. She is co-editor with poet Michael Dumanis of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande Books, 2006). Her second book of poems, Fragment of the Head of a Queen, was published by Sarabande in August 2007. A recent Whiting Award recipient and 2007 NYFA Gregory Millard Fellow, she teaches poetry writing in Lesley University's low-residency MFA program and is an associate professor in creative writing at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.

Reviews

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...I meant to take
the sky here and play it as lover, but what use
do I have for metaphor? It always placed a thing
between me and another..."

and

"Why have I likened everything to element? Now
to be reconciled, to acknowledge a lie: it's not
the sky that has such terrible, beautiful weather."

-from "READING THE NEW SKY"

[Emily Wolahan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heavy on the love story and the "I" but extremely tight writing and exciting line structure.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I met Cate Marvin right after this debut book came out. People, that was 19 years ago. I am curious about her subsequent books--and girlfriend can capture what it feels like to be alone.

#SealeyChallenge #CateMarvin

From “Landscape Without You”

“... Where I live
a tarp shakes all night; cans
land on pavement, tossed from

windows of cars that blur by
where I live. Where I live
windows are ladled red with
light your sun leaves me with.

Repairs are made to roofs which
will never cover me. As I read
the road between us, tire tracks
unscroll their tawdry calligraphy.

Any day now you shall arrive, roar
into my eye with your mountainside.
Where I live when I live where
landscape cannot survive you.”

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some interesting, clever poems in here but mostly the collection is uneven and I found myself having to push myself to finish it.

[Babble · Rating 4 out of 5]

There once was a book of love, not love, unlove, loving, love poems. They were in a book of poetry called, World's Tallest Disaster. They were written by a clever, articulate, witty, woman named, Cate Marvin. Consider the following excerpt:

A Brief Attachment ...


I regard your affection, find your teeth have
left me a bruise necklace. The lipstick marks
leech a trail, ear to ear, facsimile your smile.
Your 40 ounces of malt beverage, your shrink
hate, your eyes dialing 911.


This woman fell in love with Cate's intense, un-love, loving, disaster-of-the-heart, state of the art, contemporary poems. I never recovered. This is a 'good thing'.

[Talia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first Cate Marvin I read was the more recent, Fragment of the Head of a Queen, and it is similar and different at the same time. This one seems a bit sloppy in spots, but almost all poems have something fantastic, incredible, and worthy of the 2002 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. There are a lot of juvenile rhymes throughout the book also, but Marvin is someone I find incredibly intruiging.

I picked up this book just a block off of the University of Cincinnati campus, where she is a PHD candidate, at a used book store.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spirited, but uneven collection, with lots of interesting wordplay and some powerful imagery. The overall mood of the collection is somewhat depressive, at times angry, which was a little off-putting for me, but that says more about me than the collection I suppose. It is a short book, but in the end I found it a little short on beauty, though long on emotion.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edgy without being cutting or consciously provocative, Cate Marvin is a pleasure to read. I want to get my hands on her latest collection, but this was the only one available at the New York Public Library.

[Mostly Sapphic Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

Based on the title and cover alone, I expected a book about 9/11. That isn't what I got, but what I did get was a gripping personal tale of womanhood, motherhood, and long distance relationships that turned out to be even better than what I expected.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

cate marvin is the prettiest poet alive.

[Ellen]

As seen here.

[jojo Lazar]

my amazing mentor this semester!

[Rebecca Lehmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read "Fragment of the Head of a Queen" first, and like it better, although there are some fantastic poems in this book.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember loving this book a long, long time ago after a breakup. In my memory, it is angry and visceral. It's not something I want to read again but am glad I had it when I did.

[Greta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cate Marvin is a new poet for us, and can be very interesting when heard out loud. We'll be hearing from her more,I bet.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

somewhere between 3.5 and 4.

take a deep breath before diving.

[Sarabande Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winner of the 2000 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, selected by Robert Pinsky