The Woman in the Next Booth: Poems [Hardcover]

Jo McDougall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1987

These poems span a wide range of subjects, including love and death, pathos and humor, and the extraordinary dimensions of such deceptively ordinary topics as "Women Married to Houses," "The Tractor Driver's Funeral," and "When the Buck or Two Steakhouse Changed Hands." McDougall combines rich wit and irony with keen insight into the human condition.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

1942
The 875
Act
After Seeing A Movie About The American Bombing
After The Quarrel
At The Vietnam War Memorial For The American Dead
Audiences
Becoming Invisible
Before The Doctor Says What He Has To Say
The Bessemer
Between The Wars
The Black And Small Birds Of Remorse
The Bluebird Cafe
Coming Back, I Visit Myself
Dancing Man
The Day After The Bottomlands Farmer Lost His Wife
Emerson County Shaping Dream
A Farm Wife Laments Her Husband's Absence
For T
The Gift
A Girl In A Sundress
Harlot Hag Dry Harpie
Hearing Tractors
The House Facing Dahlia
In The Visitor's Room
Labor Day
A Lady Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter Say
Men
The Menial
Next Door
One Mile Out Of New Smyrna
The Other Side
The Paper Xylophone
The Privileged
The Professor Of Chinese Dialects ...
Progress
Remembering A Sunny Climate
Reporting Back
Settlement
Silly Women
Something, Anything
Stopping My Car For The Light
Things That Will Keep
To A Man In Kansas
The Tractor Driver's Funeral
The Voice Of The Radio Announcer
Walking Down Prospect
Watching
When The Buck Or Two Steakhouse Changed Hands
Winter Room
A Woman Married To Grief
Women Who Marry Houses
Works
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

About the Author

Jo McDougall, a native of the Arkansas Delta, now lives in Little Rock. She is also the author of the poetry collections From Darkening Porches and Towns Facing Railroads, three chapbooks, and the monograph Roots and Recognition: Where Poetry Comes From. She has taught at Pittsburg State University in Kansas and Northeast Louisiana University. She has held three MacDowell Colony fellowships, and her poetry has appeared in such journals as The Kenyon Review, The Hudson Review, New Orleans Review, and New Letters. Her work has most recently been anthologized in The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry and Arkansas, Arkansas: 1970-Present (Vol. II). She is now working on a memoir and has just completed her fourth poetry collection. A film based on McDougalls dramatic monologues is scheduled for release in the summer of 2000. She holds an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from the University of Arkansas. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 60 pages
• Publisher: Bkmk Pr/Umkc (May 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0933532644
• ISBN-13: 978-0933532649
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,922,395 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Every clown cries inside., June 11, 2000

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Woman in the Next Booth (Paperback)

Finally, a book worth hanging onto. I've read this one before, but it's been long enough that I didn't remember whether I liked McDougall all that well, or whether the pack rat in me was holding onto this, so I took another spin through it. And I was holding onto it because it's good. McDougall writes short, to-the-point, and oftentimes very funny things that conceal the usual subjects of poetry-- pain, loss, existential crises. But it isn't often that they're presented with such good humor:

Coming Back, I Visit Myself

I knock twice on the door of the old apartment. A woman lets me in. My silver toiletries. My plants. My knife and fork and napkin. I look to see what has died or been given away but everything is here.

I say nothing. I am not supposed to say anything. I poke my head in the closet looking for the good green dress.

---

Oftentimes it seems that the best poetry is created with unexpected juxtaposition, just as the best humor is, and one wonders at times why humor is not used as a device more often in poetry. And while I'd hesitate to go so far as to draw a comparison between McDougall, a relatively understated humorist, and Mel Brooks, it's certainly not out of the question. This is a fine little book, one which will remain on my shelves to be read again after enough time has passed that I have let the memory of the small pleasures contained herein blur, and I'll likely be just as pleasantly surprised again at how good a book this is.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best work by the most underrated poet writing in America, October 7, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Memphis, Tennessee) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Woman in the Next Booth: Poems (Hardcover)

"The Woman in the Next Booth" is the quietly feminist, subtly pungent work of a woman I labeled in a review some years ago as "the most underrated poet . . . in America."

Like the rain in the Delta she comes from, McDougall's poems sneak up on you, catch you unawares. Their effect can be chilling or warming, and surprising either way.

If there's something wrong with this collection, it's the title--taken, as such titles are, from a poem within. The title might spur in many men, even of literary bent, a sniff of disdain, and give the whiff of something "too" feminine for male notice. Wrong: These poems punch, even as they whisper.

I've heard McDougall read, and I've heard an audience literally gasp, collectively, at one or other of her lines. And I hear her voice in this collection.

As a writer, I aspire to her delicacy and power. And, as a linguist and teacher, I delight in the way McDougall herself delights in licking the syllables.

If you're not chronically postmodern or terminally hip and you think there's something worth reading for in Ciardi, Frost, Sandburg, or Eliot, pick up "The Woman in the Next Booth"--or, for that matter, any of McDougall's collections. It won't be the last you'll buy.