Winner of the 2022 Paterson Poetry Prize, this coming-of-age collection is set in 1960s Paterson, New Jersey.
Wonderama is a collection of cinematic, surprising, and at times harrowing poems that capture 1960s Paterson, New Jersey, as experienced by the poorest, most vulnerable children living there. With candor, ferocity, and stunning imagery, Catherine Doty’s poems explore survival and loss in the life of a young girl escaping the perils of want, neglect, and abuse. At times both heartbreaking and vaudevillian, Doty’s work chronicles sexual awakening and assault, alcoholism, the hazards of Catholic school, and the complex consequences of coming of age in the inner city.
![CavanKerry Press image](/dam/ucp/books/publishers/20200929-CavanKerry_Horiz_2C-200.jpg)
Reviews
Table of Contents
Breathing Under Water
For Thomas Mosby
Sweet Ants
Tumbled
Grandma
The First Time I Was Told to Fuck Myself
Wonderama
The Dawn of Beauty
Behind Bars
II
What Does Not Kill Us
Half Day Kindergarten
Mikado, 1960
Catching
Gnomon
Standing, 1964
Touch
EZ Bake
Larval
Migraine
Dirt Cellar
Riding the Maniac
III
Flag
Switch
Gorillas
At the Circus
Salesman
Federal Sweets and Biscuit, l962
Shaman
IV
Dusk
New Girl in Town
Franny Takes Advice
Franny of the Jungle
Condemned
Hitter
V
Seaside Heights, 1964
Fun
Here, Boy
Sixteen, in the One Room That Locks
On Valley Road
Working Girls
JC and Me in the Summer of 64
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