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Praise for Horns (Winner of the 2022 Two Sylvias Press Wilder Series Book Prize):
Tiffany Midge’s Horns is a comedic romp and a razor-edged burlesque, with seriousness in its bones. Midge’s cast of characters, drawn from pop culture, history, and literature in equal measure, is epic, from the Maiden on the Land O’Lakes Butter Box to Martha Stewart to Corpse Bride, the Girl Scouts of America to Satan himself. Her structures are as abundant as her performers. There are lists, outlines, contemporary ghazals and sonnets, interviews, statistical round-ups, and marriage vows. There’s nuance, too, and spot-on moments of lyricism: “Her dresses, hung in the closet like sides of beef,” she writes in one poem. And at the end of “Matrimonial Vows for Cannibals:” “I will savor your brain for last, that soft, sweet rind, / your edible, desirable, loveable mind.” True to its title, Horns is sharp, dangerous, and melodic, a collection that resonates with joyous critique.
--Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets and Modern Poetry
In this lyric collection, Midge frankensteins hybrids, patches disparate fragments into forms that reflect the grotesque as a sort of caricature to mock power structures. She’s by turns evocative, provocative, and funny as hell—like all good humorists, simultaneously hilarious and deadly serious, as she reimagines such Great American (Indian) Novels as The Dreamcatcher in the Rye, the use of Savage ____ in the titles of Native/White interracial romance novels whose lovers lack “commod bods,” Satan’s horned daughter struggling as the ultimate interracial child, or the Indian Princess gone MIA from the Land O’ Lakes box: “O our butter maiden / brought all the boys to the yard /… / the only Indian woman gone missing / that anyone…cares about.”
—Heidi Czerwiec, author of Fluid States
Tiffany Midge’s Horns is a comedic romp and a razor-edged burlesque, with seriousness in its bones. Midge’s cast of characters, drawn from pop culture, history, and literature in equal measure, is epic, from the Maiden on the Land O’Lakes Butter Box to Martha Stewart to Corpse Bride, the Girl Scouts of America to Satan himself. Her structures are as abundant as her performers. There are lists, outlines, contemporary ghazals and sonnets, interviews, statistical round-ups, and marriage vows. There’s nuance, too, and spot-on moments of lyricism: “Her dresses, hung in the closet like sides of beef,” she writes in one poem. And at the end of “Matrimonial Vows for Cannibals:” “I will savor your brain for last, that soft, sweet rind, / your edible, desirable, loveable mind.” True to its title, Horns is sharp, dangerous, and melodic, a collection that resonates with joyous critique.
--Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets and Modern Poetry
In this lyric collection, Midge frankensteins hybrids, patches disparate fragments into forms that reflect the grotesque as a sort of caricature to mock power structures. She’s by turns evocative, provocative, and funny as hell—like all good humorists, simultaneously hilarious and deadly serious, as she reimagines such Great American (Indian) Novels as The Dreamcatcher in the Rye, the use of Savage ____ in the titles of Native/White interracial romance novels whose lovers lack “commod bods,” Satan’s horned daughter struggling as the ultimate interracial child, or the Indian Princess gone MIA from the Land O’ Lakes box: “O our butter maiden / brought all the boys to the yard /… / the only Indian woman gone missing / that anyone…cares about.”
—Heidi Czerwiec, author of Fluid States
Sample Poem:
Amateur Psychoanalysis of Children’s Literature
Oompa Loompas—representative of id, ego
and superego’s integration.
Eat me, drink me, tell me again all the ways Alice
isn't acting out a Christ Complex?
Sure, Pippi Longstocking has Daddy issues,
but what’s more concerning, have you seen her horse?
Though often misdiagnosed as a compulsive literalist,
when it comes to Amelia Bedelia’s affliction there is no DSM-VI listing.
Does George suffer from a Cinderella or Oedipal Complex?
This is undecided, but clearly, his keeper is a giant banana.
Freud believed that spiders are the unconscious’ symbol for vaginas--
what does that say about Wilbur (a pig) and Charlotte (a spider)?
Green Eggs and Ham is just another way of denying one’s male
and female latent phase of development.
What James is actually doing with a sky-born peach remains to be seen
but plenty of people can see it’s a giant piece of ass.
“Willy Wonka,” is that not the most penis-ey name you’ve ever heard?
Each child is a different deadly sin.
Dick and Jane don’t cotton to coincidence. Dog is God spelled backwards,
and Spot is Tops, writes Jane in her synchronicity diary.
It never was a dream, the lands Max embarks upon, the lands Where
the Wild Things Are, but man’s journey into his subconscious.
For Veruca Salt to be put right, like all narcissists of her ilk,
requires no less but a good thrashing.
Goodnight Moon or as poet Dylan Thomas raged against the dying of the
light, do not go gently: a bedtime story for the elderly.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, not to be confused
with The Human Centipede.
Everyone Poops—symbol of anal development phase or manifestation
of castration anxiety?
Are You My Mother is the refrain in every therapist’s office, in every
lover’s bed.
Amateur Psychoanalysis of Children’s Literature
Oompa Loompas—representative of id, ego
and superego’s integration.
Eat me, drink me, tell me again all the ways Alice
isn't acting out a Christ Complex?
Sure, Pippi Longstocking has Daddy issues,
but what’s more concerning, have you seen her horse?
Though often misdiagnosed as a compulsive literalist,
when it comes to Amelia Bedelia’s affliction there is no DSM-VI listing.
Does George suffer from a Cinderella or Oedipal Complex?
This is undecided, but clearly, his keeper is a giant banana.
Freud believed that spiders are the unconscious’ symbol for vaginas--
what does that say about Wilbur (a pig) and Charlotte (a spider)?
Green Eggs and Ham is just another way of denying one’s male
and female latent phase of development.
What James is actually doing with a sky-born peach remains to be seen
but plenty of people can see it’s a giant piece of ass.
“Willy Wonka,” is that not the most penis-ey name you’ve ever heard?
Each child is a different deadly sin.
Dick and Jane don’t cotton to coincidence. Dog is God spelled backwards,
and Spot is Tops, writes Jane in her synchronicity diary.
It never was a dream, the lands Max embarks upon, the lands Where
the Wild Things Are, but man’s journey into his subconscious.
For Veruca Salt to be put right, like all narcissists of her ilk,
requires no less but a good thrashing.
Goodnight Moon or as poet Dylan Thomas raged against the dying of the
light, do not go gently: a bedtime story for the elderly.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, not to be confused
with The Human Centipede.
Everyone Poops—symbol of anal development phase or manifestation
of castration anxiety?
Are You My Mother is the refrain in every therapist’s office, in every
lover’s bed.
