Sundown at the Redneck Carnival

by John Dorsey

John Dorsey's book is a tribute to small town life. He carefully dissects the lives of his characters to find the crossroads where dreams were thwarted, and how the survivors of these lost dreams manage to carry on anyway, sometimes as though they don't even know how close they came to escaping the bear trap of smoky bars and bar fights and the endless cycle of pregnancy and childrearing. Each inhabitant of these poems is treated with delicate dignity, leaving you with the feeling that you've met each and every one of these characters at some point in your own life, or may have even been in one of two of these poems yourself.

Holly Day, author of INTO THE CRACKS

John Dorsey is one of my favorite living poets - clear minute particulars and broken-hearted honesty. Generous empathetic outlook for our hardened times.

Marc Olmsted, author of DON'T HESITATE: KNOWING ALLEN

GINSBERG

There's a bleakness to the landscape of John Dorsey's characters. The clouds are always low. Someone is always scraping together money for a cheeseburger or a pint of wine. Despite that, the landscape is livable because the cheeseburgers are tasty and the wine quenches a thirst. His characters know that "painting flowers with a closed fist / lacks imagination." Reading this fine collection is like coming upon a magical "tar paper shack / full of poems / & beehives / & music."

Mike James, author of Leftover Distances

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Paperback

First published January 13, 2022

About the author

John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016), Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Press, 2017) and Triple Threat (Crisis Chronicles, 2019). He has served as the Poet Laureate of Belle, Missouri. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times.

Reviews

[Paige Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite a kinda misnomer title, there are sticky moments of gravity: the pregnant southern belle swaying like a black omen, printer ink-cheeked mullet boys as “the Lindbergh baby left to rot without a ransom note,” the girls drowning in drink like picnic dragonflies. Undoubtedly some interesting images, if complex, like a boy as a tongueless bear with bloody but innocent paws. Much petal-pretty talk about pregnant bellies and wind-riding screams. Or his mind being a beehived shack to wait out a sandstorm w/ a crush. I had hoped this book would have more levity, maybe something Juggalo-adjacent, but it’s mostly frowning at the dusty photo books of his life. (Minus the mini poem saying he’s a perfect match for a supersized-schnoz girl because he has a teeny woodpecker. Of course that was a fun one.)

I’m just disappointed by some common phrases like “aged a thousand years,” a kid being a bad apple, or things that could be given more context like the school setting of the Ida ‘86 poem because I wasn’t sure how we went from shaking shuttles to mashed potatoes to dead gays until a few reads in. I’m not sure how often I should find the tragedy ironic, but I guess that’s the outcome of Taco Bell car wrecks and suicides after ice cream scoops. At least, I regard the Deep South as sadly funny, the Midwest chronically boring. Perhaps I was just expecting more modern and masculine prose, the consistency in that. Instead of seriousness, I do find cuteness to the line about a dryer-fresh sock bleeding red, white, and blue.

Many of these poems are dedicated to somebody, so it almost feels too private to hold this book without knowing the author IRL. A lot of regret for dead past lives and loved ones. Some younger tales of friends in sitcom-bad mall romances (buying them cheap jewelry to come home to them leaving). Trailer Park Song ‘96 is my favorite because it’s more like what the title promises w/ a girl working boys to men and vice versa on her shag carpet. The baby beauty pageant poem was good. There is some slight commentary on Covid and MeToo but, admittedly, I don’t know what it’s trying to say (not that there’s one way to read art). I don’t believe the author is terribly older than me, though unfortunately I catch very few of the celebrity references.

[Greg Rapier · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend heard Dorsey read at a Pittsburgh backyard then I bought the book while taxied at the Atlanta airport and began reading the next day in south Florida.

Crazy the path books sometimes travel. This book is good.

Favorites: Poem for Shelly Andrews, East Coast/West Coast in Southern Missouri, Poem for a noseless man, Poem for my grandmother dead at 61, Omaha Song #3

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite.