Discography

Yale Series of Younger Poets

by Sean Singer

Playful, experimental, jazz-influenced, the poems in Sean Singer’s Discography delight in sound and approach the more abstract pleasures of music. Singer takes as his subjects music, jazz figures, and historical events. Series judge W. S. Merwin praises Singer for his “roving demands on his language” and “the quick-changes of his invention in search of some provisional rightness.”

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2002

About the author

Sean Singer’s first book Discography won the 2001 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, selected by W.S. Merwin, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is also the recipient of a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Harlem, New York City.

New England Review:
[http://cat.middlebury.edu/~nereview/2...]

Anti--
http://anti-poetry.com/singerse1/

Interview:
[http://www.sharkforum.org/2008/03/int...]

Critiphoria:
[http://www.critiphoria.org/Issue1/Sea...]
Guernica:
[http://www.guernicamag.com/poetry/431...]
Ken Burns poem: [http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/pr...]
Scrapple from the Apple: [http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/pr...]
Passport:
[http://www.beardofbees.com/singer.html]
Drunken Boat:
[http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/index....]
Franz Kafka: Serious About Your Safety:
[http://cms.skidmore.edu/salmagundi/ba...]
Memorious:
[http://www.memorious.org/?author=28]
Electronic Poetry Review:
[http://www.epoetry.org/issues/issue5/...]
Fishouse Poems:
[http://www.fishousepoems.org/archives...]
NEA.gov:
[http://www.nea.gov/features/Writers/S...]
Velocity of Celebration: Jazz & Semiotics:
[http://www.allaboutjazz.com/articles/...]
Boston Phoenix:
[http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/a...]
Sharkforum:
[http://sharkforum.org/archives/2007/1...]
Electronic Poetry Review again:
[http://www.epoetry.org/issues/issue8/...]

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sean was my Professor of Advanced Poetry at Hunter College. He was not only an amazing poet, but also an amazing critic. Love his love of jazz. An old soul trapped in the mind of a young, (re)fresh(ing) voice. If you love music, you'll dance in between his words.

[Todd Jenkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I've "known" the author for a number of years as a fellow member of the Jazz-L mailing list. That said, I voice no personal bias in touting the engaging beauty of this collection. Sean is one of the most gifted young American poets I have ever encountered, and his love of jazz and the arts is echoed marvelously in this collection. Creative wordplay and a deep gift for imagery make this a keeper.

[Jenni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely poems.

[Francis · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a musician myself, I appreciated all the music related vocabulary, and sometimes the Gertrude-Stein like nonsense words that served more a rhythmic, musical purpose. However, the poems that touched me the most were the ones in which it became more grounded, such as "Who Can Sy the Bottles of Heaven", "Loss" (both of them), "The Gift," and "'Dear heart, how like you this?'". The loss and loneliness that appeared in many of these poems felt more real, and while the jazzy bebop word passages gave a lightness and playful tone to the overarching themes, there is less of a desire to return to those pieces once they were done (they feel like one-offs), whereas his grounded poems I want to come back to and feel those feelings again. Overall though, props for the way it challenged me and was inventive and I can see how it won the Yale Series of Younger Poets award. I’d be curious to read some of his other poetry collections and see if this playful nonsense verse still permeates, or if it ditches the abstract music-based play for more real life insights.

[Leonard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this collection of poetry at a used bookstore in Texas, partly because the forward is by W. S. Merwin, a poet I admire and have read for over 50 years. After reading the book and finding most of the poems rather obscure, I still think that Merwin's forward may have been a good reason to purchase this one.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jazz vibes.

[Jeff Crompton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poems in the first half of Discography are music-themed; I read that section quickly. After a long break, I read the second half of the book more slowly, a poem or two at a time. These are rich poems, but they're not "easy." Singer reminds me of Wallace Stevens - not that there is much superficial similarity between their poetry, but because Singer's use of language is sometimes as dense and enigmatic as that of Stevens.

There's much beauty here; some of it feels just out of my reach. Nothing wrong with that - I look forward to reading these poems again.