Overview

When Kathleen Driskell pulled an old edition of Emily Post's Etiquette from the used bookstore shelf and blew dust off the blue linen cover, she instantly found herself and her family within those pages—not as the Worldlys, Oldlineages, or the Gildings (archetypes Post created to demonstrate how to properly manage a grand house full of servants), but as the housemaids, cooks, and useful men working for those very rich. The noted poet—whose collection Seed Across Snow was twice listed as a national bestseller by the Poetry Foundation—explores class, the workplace, and those tense interactions between the haves and the have nots in her new collection. As America watches its middle-class quickly decline, Blue Etiquette rings with relevance.  

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9781597091558

Table of Contents

Reviews

Tossed into the world with no mother, adrift and afloat, yet grounded by her artist's eye, Annie La Ganga's spin through life infuses this book, her words carry us in an enlivening rush. I look forward to each unexpected line and person and insight and place. The book is hilarious, heart-breaking and heart-lifting all at once, a breath-taking funky prose poem memoir. --Susan Wooldridge, author of poemcrazy: freeing your life with words and Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing Ever feel like putting on a coconut bra, boiling your brain in Jack Daniels and throwing a Saguaro cactus in the back seat of your baby blue Ford Pinto and hightailing into the bong smoke of Tomorrowland? Here's the skinny, La Ganga is rolling up some fatty poems and you better wrap your lips around those kind words and start puffing, (cough) if you know what's (cough) good for you man. I'm talking huge chunks of sticky sweet prose, like she's some magic dragon singing adult child lullabies, you dreamy much yet? --Gary Glazner, founder of the Alzheimer's Poetry Project, author of How to Make a Living as a Poet (Soft Skull Press)

Tossed into the world with no mother, adrift and afloat, yet grounded by her artist's eye, Annie La Ganga's spin through life infuses this book, her words carry us in an enlivening rush. I look forward to each unexpected line and person and insight and place. The book is hilarious, heart-breaking and heart-lifting all at once, a breath-taking funky prose poem memoir. --Susan Wooldridge, author of poemcrazy: freeing your life with words and Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing Ever feel like putting on a coconut bra, boiling your brain in Jack Daniels and throwing a Saguaro cactus in the back seat of your baby blue Ford Pinto and hightailing into the bong smoke of Tomorrowland? Here's the skinny, La Ganga is rolling up some fatty poems and you better wrap your lips around those kind words and start puffing, (cough) if you know what's (cough) good for you man. I'm talking huge chunks of sticky sweet prose, like she's some magic dragon singing adult child lullabies, you dreamy much yet? --Gary Glazner, founder of the Alzheimer's Poetry Project, author of How to Make a Living as a Poet (Soft Skull Press)

Ever feel like putting on a coconut bra, boiling your brain in Jack Daniels and throwing a Saguaro cactus in the back seat of your baby blue Ford Pinto and hightailing into the bong smoke of Tomorrowland? Here's the skinny, La Ganga is rolling up some fatty poems and you better wrap your lips around those kind words and start puffing, (cough) if you know what's (cough) good for you man. I'm talking huge chunks of sticky sweet prose, like she's some magic dragon singing adult child lullabies, you dreamy much yet? --Gary Glazner, founder of the Alzheimer's Poetry Project, author of How to Make a Living as a Poet (Soft Skull Press) Tossed into the world with no mother, adrift and afloat, yet grounded by her artist's eye, Annie La Ganga's spin through life infuses this book, her words carry us in an enlivening rush. I look forward to each unexpected line and person and insight and place. The book is hilarious, heart-breaking and heart-lifting all at once, a breath-taking funky prose poem memoir. --Susan Wooldridge, author of poemcrazy: freeing your life with words and Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing

Author Information

Annie La Ganga is a poet, performer, and visual artist. She has worked as a waitress, a file clerk, a substitute teacher, a cake decorator, and a shoplifter. She is the author of the prose-poetry memoir, Stoners and Self-Appointed Saints (Red Hen Press). She is the author and illustrator of several zines and chapbooks, including the feminist comic book series And Everything Nice (AK Press). She was a member of the 1999 Seattle Poetry Slam team, a performer with Sister Spit's All Girl Poetry Circus and Rambling Road Show, and the lead singer and songwriter of the punk rock band Pink Chihuahua. She is a committed arts activist and was awarded the Travis County Sheriff's 2002 Volunteer of the Year Award for her work as a life drawing teacher at Del Valle Jail. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her long-time boyfriend, novelist Bill Cotter.

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