The Dinner Party

“"Whether she’s narrating an Ovidian verse drama, composing a sonnet sequence, or retelling Plato’s Symposium in perfectly iambic envelope quatrains, Cat Fitzpatrick is a total genius at making old modes accommodate new realities. I’m so moved by this virtuosic collection of long poems about queer family-making, freaky friendship, erotic love, and gender transition. The Dinner Party is brilliant, hot, uproarious, and gay as hell: at once a high-wire camp performance and an aching tribute to the sounds and shapes of our language.”

– Maggie Millner, author of Couplets: A Love Story

“Cat Fitzpatrick’s The Dinner Party celebrates love, community, domesticity and their manifold humiliations; grieves the loss inherent in love, monitors friend’s clashes with the rapt gaze of a connoisseur, airs intimacy’s fecal folds, and comes down soundly each time on the side of more: “we must refuse/to not be charmed.” How fathom the vasts of the poet’s perversity? She rhymes because she likes it. I like it too.”

– Sophia Dahlin, author of Glove Money