Midsummer Night's Toast

Poems

Mamie Morgan

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780821426692
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Midsummer Night’s Toast is a collection that answers to no one, a freedom we learn the speaker has finally afforded herself after a half-life spent under the glaring light of tradition, fear, of men, of institutions. She’s answered to her parents, to students, to academia, shame, to the workshop model, to various earlier versions of herself and is ready—in short—to have a good time. The invite list for this particular party belongs entirely to her: friends, street names, Kelly Ripa inside a crossword puzzle, bounced checks, hurricanes and Marilyn Hacker, frat boys and birds, bridal shops, Chaucer, the pictures her husband draws, King Arthur, Adrienne Rich. She’s sad for sure, and angry, but she’s also fierce as fire. At times these poems feel hurried, because they are. The landscape of this book feels like that penultimate moment in When Harry Met Sally when Billy Crystal says, “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” Mamie Morgan is reenacting a half-life of pain utilizing a kaleidoscope she’s crafted from discarded paper, felt, cheap gemstones, crayons worn to nubs, and mixtapes. Lots of mixtapes.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Happiness
• Barn Sour
• The morning after mispronouncing Antigone in Mrs. King’s eighth-grade Lit class
• When Finn returns my copy of Mark Doty’s Fire to Fire she announces
• Frat
• My husband is learning to draw a leather jacket
• A Bride’s Tale
• My husband names the field he’s drawing Femur
• Rijksmuseum, & a woman in periwinkle wants her boyfriend to photograph her ascending
• Ashley’s having trouble killing people
• It’s spring, & my husband thinks Josh Groban wrote “Hallelujah”
• Happiness was supposed to end
• My husband discovers Janis Joplin well into the pandemic
• The Kind That Produces Children
• Sin in Living
• When M’Randa drives grocery delivery with the baby strapped to her & some rich folks don’t tip
• Kirby wants “Champagne Supernova” playing at her funeral
• Instant Classic
• Workshop
• Mamie Morgan’s Midsummer Night’s Toast
• Job Shadow
• When my mother calls to ask if I’ve heard of A. E. Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young”
• The Lady of Shalott is taking a breather
• A woman who follows me on Instagram messages to say her pit bull suffocated on an empty bag of potato chips
• Hunter Moon
• My husband draws a rubber ducky he won at the movies seven different ways
• When my husband & I pretend to move to London
• It’s 1999, & my boyfriend’s mom wants to know which one I am
• When my husband congratulates a one-year-old at our gate on her success perambulating
• A Bride’s Tale
• My husband asks the class of kindergarteners if they’re plein air drawing
• Spotless Mind
• After I turn in the rough draft of a novella titled, I shit you not, Naked with Traces of Salt, Professor Wortham shows up in the margins of page 17 all like
• How Often
• When my husband slides a record from Barbra Streisand’s sleeve & it’s actually The Best of Aerosmith
• A Bride’s Tale
• My husband can’t stop talking about the sex lives of anglerfish
• Mamie Morgan’s Midsummer Night’s Toast (Reprise)
• Acknowledgments