Introduction to Surrender Dorothy by Laura Lee Washburn
Every year, I hid from the winged monkeys. And yet, they told us to watch, and we did. Gail Griffin’s take on the 1939 film, in the fine poems that make up Surrender Dorothy enters the long and celebrated conversation with L. Frank Baum’s source material that Hollywood and American TV have enshrined in American culture. And these ten poems are delightful, witty, clever, playful, and, at the same time, meaningful. The Wizard of Oz fans will delight in these resurrections and hot takes, while poetry lovers will dig the wordplay, sound, and arc. Here, we find super real psychic truths and feminist re-imaginings of not only witches and Dorothy, but also Aunt Em and Miss Gulch.
Griffin writes, “Maybe you’re not the girl / they think you are,” but what dark dream of Kansas is that girl—or any of us—surrendering to in this series of ten poems? “Maybe you’re not the girl / they think you are” is a second person I can drop right into because we all know that we’re emphatically “not the girl they think [we] are.” “Trio”’s conceit is dating, three boyfriends, it’s funny, and feels real. “Rely on the dog.” I’m saying you’re probably going to feel seen.
Most of the poems function as dramatic monologues and address a second person that’s Dorothy, and because these poems are exemplary, obviously more than Dorothy. The characters that speak are often women, fully centered in their agency, and in their understanding of each other and themselves. Aunt Em, for example, in her wry voice, transforms from “a Kansas woman, dry, flat / unmysterious” into an entity no Kansas woman should deny, as Griffin writes, “Inside every Kansas woman / a dark funnel furls.”
These poems are entertaining in their hot takes. They’re rife with double entendre and employ enjoyable play with form. “Winged Monkeys”’s anaphoric “maybes” open and close the first poem. A visual or shaped poem occurs in just the right place. We find a sonnet, thoughtful stanzas, and the hemistichs and stepdown lines of “Ruby Slippers” harken back to Anglo-Saxon prosody as its steady beats become the chant, the drumbeat of the quest. Deft, quick images stretch across time and epiphany. The poems’ internal rhyme, consonant calling to consonants, and banger last lines are pure pleasure.
Every time I read Surrender Dorothy, I find some artful element I haven’t seen before; structures and beams underlie these poems crafting a solid collection from those opening and closing “maybes” to the “Coda’s” calling back to “What if’s” in “Trio.” The so-called “great and powerful” suddenly isn’t that “fool” and “charlatan,” but instead “the great What-If” embedded in the story’s triggering Oz incident.
The final lines feel like something I should already have memorized with their classic quality; they’re something to carry with me, a lesson for watching film, or art, or the world. These lines direct us to “pay attention,” and, like the best art and poetry, focus us on “what’s not there.”
Surrender Dorothy
Maybe you’re not the girl
they think you are.
Them counting their chickens.
The gingham tugs across your chest.
You hurl yourself into the pigsty,
the squeals, the mud, the stink.
You pray for storms.
At night you fear your dreams.
They crouch, clawing, grinning,
bouncing on their haunches.
Maybe they sprout dark wings.
You with your dog, your dramas,
your why-then-oh-why-can’t-I.
Because it’s Kansas, that’s why,
and I’m a Kansas woman, dry, flat,
unmysterious. I count my chickens,
hope they hatch, try to raise this girl
who thinks she knows me.
Well, look hard into that glass ball.
There I am, searching the wild sky,
wringing my hands, calling
your name. Now you miss me,
don’t you? Keep watching:
My eyes sharpen.
My doughy face goes green,
hones to a hatchet.
Do you know me now, child?
Inside every Kansas woman
a dark funnel furls.
I know my rights.
I don’t forget my wrongs.
Cycle spins to cyclone.
What beats in me is rage.
My backbone is a horizon,
my jawbone a weapon.
What if your golden road
leads in my direction?
What if you grow up
to be Miss Gale,
circling your turret,
flat black solo act,
scrawling sooty demands
across uneasy clouds?
Blow hot and cold,
don’t you, princess?
Spin yourself
to a fury. Stretch,
swell, hungry enough
to swallow a hopeless
landscape. Announce
yourself. Write your name
across the dust. Make yourself
a tunnel, a way out, a passage
from sepia
to
technicolor.
When you dream a mother
does she float down to you,
shimmering like the angel
at the top of the tree?
Does she smile like
she’s seen it all?
Does she show you how
to shoo away the losers,
make the little people
gasp and bow?
Will she spin your gingham
into gold, explain
that everything depends
on the right shoes?
Do you believe her kiss
will protect you?
Does she tell you
about power
by telling you
very little?
Shiny.
Shocking.
Luminous.
Lurid.
Party pumps.
Hiking boots.
Magnetic.
Repellant.
Perfect fit.
Perfect target.
Your way in.
Your way out.
What if you had three boyfriends.
A dancer, a romancer, a doofus
with manhood issues.
They’ll tend toward stupid,
except for the one
who thinks he’s stupid.
They’ll each present a gaping need.
Before you know it, you’re
the answer.
They’ll require mommying.
Stuffing straw, oiling hinges,
slapping noses.
They’ll need to see themselves
as your protectors.
Rely on the dog.
You’ll try to get them happy
endings, filled vacancies.
One day you’ll wake up
realizing you’ve met them
all before.
The fatherless girl walks
a long road winding
toward promises. She imagines
one who will know
who she is. He’ll fill needs
like Christmas stockings.
She looks for him everywhere
and finds him there.
He is the gatekeeper,
guardsman, holder of reins.
Mind reader, taskmaster,
judge demanding evidence.
She grows small and meek.
Her time is running out.
It ends at a flimsy curtain
yanked back.
Another fool, another
charlatan. Watch him
take off. Watch him
abandon her again.
Maybe something in you isn’t
a girl at all. It escapes
whatever lid drops down.
Sometimes it bites.
Maybe it can sniff trouble.
Catch a whiff of wicked.
Bark in a big cat’s face.
Snatch the opportune sausage.
Its simplicity resolves things.
Brains, heart, courage, all
in one small package.
A totality.
Call me the great What-If.
Let’s say the house came down
500 yards to the left.
Let’s say you never saw
my striped legs curl back
like paper noisemakers.
Let’s say the red shoes
stayed where they were.
Where’s your story now?
When you look
at a picture, pay attention
to what’s not there.
Surrender Dorothy
— Winner of the Washburn Prize, 2024 —
Copyright © 2024 Gail Griffin
Foreword by Laura Lee Washburn
Cover design by Diana Baltag
Book design and layout by Diana Baltag
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or republished without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Harbor Review
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Gail Griffin
Gail Griffin is the author of four nonfiction books, most recently “Grief’s Country: A Memoir in Pieces.” Her first poetry collection, “Omena Bay Testament,” won the Wilder Prize from Two Sylvias Press. Gail lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.