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Midsummer Night's Toast: Poems
80 pages, Paperback
Published April 7, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 1, 2026
I haven't read a collection quite like this before. Combine the clarity of Marie Howe, the playfulness of Matthew Dickman, and the company of your best friend--their honesty about their life and yours--and you get this classic book. This book goes straight to your heart, making you laugh at the same time that it goes deep to your soul, through your fears, and to the joy on the other side. I LOVE THIS BOOK.
April 29, 2026
This book cracked me open. A poem has not made me feel so alive — joyously, humbly, screaming-to-the-sky-that-I'm-quitting-the-cigarettes-for-real-this-time alive — as the titular poem since Ross Gay's "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude."
What I keep coming back to is the dexterity of Morgan's speaker, how empathy and privacy are braided together throughout the poems such that some emotional truths are arrived at by revealing and others by concealing. Associative movement and flexible syntax long a strength of Morgan's, in her second collection some jumps might better be described as dissociative, but it's often what brings the speaker back that's most memorable. Like in "Barn Sour," when the speaker's politely perfunctory lunch with her in-laws cushions the private and internal recollection of her father, how it's the next booth over that reintegrates the scene. There are dozens of moments like that throughout this book, when the unstuck-in-time-ness of feeling is deftly reconciled by a detail perhaps not only Morgan would notice, but only she could make sing.
Analysis aside, this book is also just really, really fun. There's a kind of permission written into the fabric, license to believe that all the dogs really will return home safe, because this is her song, damn it. We're lucky to have it.
What I keep coming back to is the dexterity of Morgan's speaker, how empathy and privacy are braided together throughout the poems such that some emotional truths are arrived at by revealing and others by concealing. Associative movement and flexible syntax long a strength of Morgan's, in her second collection some jumps might better be described as dissociative, but it's often what brings the speaker back that's most memorable. Like in "Barn Sour," when the speaker's politely perfunctory lunch with her in-laws cushions the private and internal recollection of her father, how it's the next booth over that reintegrates the scene. There are dozens of moments like that throughout this book, when the unstuck-in-time-ness of feeling is deftly reconciled by a detail perhaps not only Morgan would notice, but only she could make sing.
Analysis aside, this book is also just really, really fun. There's a kind of permission written into the fabric, license to believe that all the dogs really will return home safe, because this is her song, damn it. We're lucky to have it.
April 17, 2026
There is no poet who has affected me quite like Mamie Morgan. Sorry Jay
May 12, 2026
she's done it again!!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews