The Girl Singer by Betsy Packard

A REVIEW OF THE GIRL SINGER BY MARIANNE WORTHINGTON

University of Kentucky Press, 2022. 104 Pages. $19.95 (Paperback), $29.95 (Hardcover)

Reviewed by Betsy Packard

Despite the old adage, in considering Marianne Worthington’s collection, The Girl

Singer, I definitely can tell much about this book from its cover. The drawn image of a young

woman with a guitar and her mouth open in song drew its inspiration from a photograph the

poet’s mother took of Dolly Parton when Dolly was 14 years old and singing in the parking lot of

an Esso gas station in Knoxville, Tennessee. Worthington spent her early years in Knoxville, but

in 1990, her family moved to southeastern Kentucky. Both locations are ripe with Appalachian

heritage, a fruit Worthington doesn’t hesitate to sink her teeth into.

The Girl Singer, published by The University Press of Kentucky in November, 2021, is

presented in three parts: The first section unveils the trials of women entertainers in the

patriarchal world of country singers. In the poem from which the collection takes its name, we

hear from an anonymous female entertainer.

How hard it was to hold my body against defeat and come to be known as just a girl

singer by those men who said we’re doing you a big favor, honey.

This young woman, relegated to “girl” status, bows to the requirements of “the bosses”

who were weary of sorrowful songs, murder ballads. She is required to do comedy sketches with

a—

…gap-toothed hayseed in his checkered jacket and short pants clowning

around with me as his sidekick and we’d laugh and laugh…

She was required to quit singing the songs close to her soul, a final blow, wiping out what

little agency she might have imagined she had.

Reading the Patsy Cline poem stirs up earworms for me of Patsy singing “Crazy” or “I

Fall to Pieces,” and I want to slow dance. The first line of this poem, “On Seeing a Letter Patsy

Cline Wrote to the Nudie Taylor,” Worthington tells me, “Her handwriting always like a song,”

illustrates how music infiltrated every part of Patsy Cline’s life, how music led to her demise

when the plane carrying her to her next gig crashed. Worthington reminds me of my own

mortality. .

…The tailor receives her letter as the wreckage smolders nose-first

in the murky woods. How long will it take you? she asks the tailor. Forever we search for the spangle and sequin

How strange it must feel to read a note from a person who died before it was read.

“Forever we follow calligraphed tones.”

The Dolly Parton poem carries the title of the song Dolly sang at the end of the movie

version of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. In popular culture, Whitney Houston comes to

mind when someone mentions “I Will Always Love You,” but Dolly sang it first. To this day I

prefer Dolly’s version.

Worthington relates the experience of attending the ribbon-cutting at the Fountain City

Esso gas station with her mother. Mom snaps a photo of “a girl from Locust Ridge named

Dolly.

and Dolly, dressed in a homemade jumper, sings high and pure Don’t let me cross over love’s cheating line.

Speaking of murder ballads, a cluster of four poems under the heading of “Recitatives on

a Murder (Wilkes County, North Carolina, 1866)” are based upon an actual murder. This crime

was also the basis for the 1960s hit song by The Kingston Trio, “Hang Down Your Head, Tom

Dooley.” Perlene and Ann Foster murdered Laurie Foster, and Tom Dula confessed to protect the

girls. Perlene and Ann were sisters. I don’t know how Laurie was related to them. Tom had been

having his way with all three of them. He was hanged for Laurie’s murder. In the first poem,

“Ann Foster Melton Speaks from her Deathbed” confessing that she and Perlene committed the

murder. In the second, “Tom Dula Speaks from the Gallows,” and at the end of the poem Tom

tells the crowd --

Men! I say, do you see this hand? I never even harmed a hair on poor sweet Laura Foster’s head!

The third poem, “Perlene Foster Speaks from the Kitchen” sheds further light on the

situation. Perlene’s speaks after Tom Dula has been executed and buried. Tom had been sexually

intimate with all three girls, and all four of them had syphilis. Immediately after the crime,

deputies heard Perlene brag about killing Laura, so Ann and Perlene were arrested and jailed.

She testified for the prosecution that Tom had killed Laura.

The fourth and final poem in this cluster, “Laura Foster Speaks from the Grave,” Laura

says she and Tom were preparing to elope using Laura’s father’s mare for the get-away. They

laid in the grass, and suddenly, Tom takes off. Laura feels a blow on her head, and “the burn of

blade inside my heart.” Worthington says in Tom’s soliloquy that he buried Laurie, and Laurie

says her body wasn’t found for three months. Worthington masterfully relates the murder

without undue sentiment.

Worthington’s second section expresses her family experiences and emotions evoked by

people and places. “Pentecost 1965” addresses the racism which kept and continues to keep

Black people out of white churches in Appalachia. The Acts Man is a Black man who witnesses

by riding his bicycle through town encased in plastic sheeting and “hand -scrawled signs”

featuring “verses from the Acts of the Apostles.” The young girl who sees the Acts Man

frequently surmises that the preacher at her church, “could call him a witness for Jesus.” She

knows this is impossible because the Acts Man isn’t white. Worthington applies irony at the

close of the poem when she says,

And when the Day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

I can relate to “The Only Way Out,” in which the child uses the ruckus of children at a

family dinner to secret herself with the Boston Terrier under the Formica table to eavesdrop on

the adults after the children leave. She waits for “crumbs of talk.” The harsh words of the adults

are “juddering in my ears.”

My own mother was a gifted and prolific seamstress, and I emulated her pursuit. My kids

knew using my sewing shears on paper equaled a mortal sin. My mother and I both had the

“rusting button can.” To this day, I cut the buttons off a garment that heads to the rag bag. “My

Grandmother’s Sewing Notions” includes “thread, her seam ripper, hooks and eyes.”

Worthington’s grandmother’s sewing notions are my own.

The cadence of her father’s use of a walker inspired “Slow Dance.” “We bend and lift his

limbs so he can sit and watch ball games” reminds me of the bell curve of life. As infants, we

depend upon others, then we gradually achieve independence, and then the reality of human

frailty makes us dependent once more, and younger family members help the elder. Watching the

neighbor boy with his pickup truck, Father poignantly says, “I used to adjust my timing,” giving

us a beautifully executed double meaning. Dad can no longer repair vehicles, and Dad used to

dictate the pace of his feet.

The third and final section of Worthington’s collection speaks to nature, to the

environment, especially in Appalachia. In “Roll Call (A Dissimulation of Birds)”, the poet

doesn’t simply list birds common to where she lives, she aptly labels them, describes their

temperaments, not holding back on the deserving cowbird.

Cowbird: The Malefactor

gimcrack work-shy thieving outlaw vengeance teeming jagged raucous dark-eyed homewrecker on the draw

The poet is kind to the “Mourning Dove: The Saint,” saying they murmur “lamentations

for us.” Doves frequent my own bird feeding area where I strew wildlife mix on the ground

which the doves, ground feeders, appear to enjoy. I have long found their cooing to be a

comforting sound. Ever since I read “Roll Call,” I think of “lamentations” whenever I hear them

– which is frequently. Worthington says the blue jay is a “mercenary,” which makes sense to

birdwatchers, and the mockingbird is a “ballad collector.” Last year, a mockingbird would perch

on the apex of my neighbor’s roof and perform his collection of ballads. I’m disappointed that

he's not back this year.

Worthington praises a common critter in “Oh, Groundhog!” While she acknowledges that

he is a rodent, “ferocious of tooth,” hated by farmers and ancestors, she admires him, his waddle,

his fur, the “wispy cups of velvet” which are his ears. He can eat voraciously. “He eats till his

britches won’t button at all.” I might mention that Worthington does use italics for emphasis and

in place of quotation marks in dialog. I’m not randomly tossing in italicized words.

She completes her litany of praise for the groundhog with --

Let me have teeth of the rodent to bite through this world