The Sorrow Apartments

by Andrea Cohen

About Andrea Cohen’s poems, Christian Wiman has “One is caught off guard by their cumulative force. This is work of great and sustained attention, true intelligence, and soul.” In The Sorrow Apartments, Cohen’s eighth collection, those signature gifts are front and center, along with sly humor, relentless economy, and the hairpin curves of gut-punch wisdom. How quickly Cohen takes us so

 
Bunker



What would I

think, coming



up after

my world



had evaporated?

I'd wish



I were water.


The Sorrow Apartments is home to spare and uncanny lyricism––as well as leaping narratives of mystery and loss and wonder. These poems race at once into the past and the possible. And yet, instead of holding things up to the light for a better view, Cohen lifts them to the dark and light, as in "Acapulco," where an unlikely companion points out, “as men tend to, / the stars comprising Orion’s belt — / as if it were the lustrous sparks and not / the leveling dark that connects us.” For a poet who has been called unfashionable from the get-go, unfashionable never looked so good.  

Genres: Poetry

139 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 15, 2024

About the author

Andrea Cohen writes and swims in Watertown, MA. Her heroes have swum Venetian canals, the Chattahoochee, and The English Channel. Her poems and stories have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Glimmer Train, The Hudson Review, etc. Her fourth poetry collection, Furs Not Mine, will be published by Four Way Books. Other collections include Kentucky Derby (Salmon Poetry 2011), Long Division (Salmon Poetry 2009), and The Cartographer's Vacation (Owl Creek Press 1999).

She has received a PEN Discovery Award, Glimmer Train's Short Fiction Award, the Owl Creek Poetry Prize and several fellowships at The MacDowell Colony. She directs the Writers House at Merrimack College and the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are poems filed down to their sharpest words, like a small blade that cuts directly into your heart. Quite a few of these are hitting pretty hard right now and I thank Andrea Cohen for knowing just the right words to devastate me.

Sea Shanty

When land
is that

abstract,
you have

to sing
your way back.

Right for the jugular, thanks for that. Oh wait...

Bunker

What would I
think, coming

up after
my world

had evaporated?
I'd wish

I were water.

Okay hurt me some more I guess, I could use it. These are sly poems, witty without being gimmicky or feeling overly from the head and not the heart because the heart pours its whole array of emotions all over these pages. These poems can be achingly funny before becoming heartache, often short and hinging around a singular word that sets off a chain reaction of emotional resonance and wordplay. Something half-heard to be a 'balm' is accepted in order to abate anxiety of 'not wanting / bomb to be / the last // word heard.' One child plays capture the flag in the dark while another captures the darkness. Does life offer you things you can steal or must one steel themselves 'to the mysteries' of life?

Swap Shop

We keep
coming back—

leaving this
mirror for that.'

The playfulness of these poems keeps the reader on their toes, moving between emotional blows with a wry smile the whole way. I love the imagery, from 'snow falling as / in a silent film' with the night descending like a projector breaking down, to the more heartbreaking of seeing a mother 'log-like' in her exhaustion in bed, 'she who had always / been a tree.' It just works. Its sometimes silly but it never becomes saccharine and this I can appreciate.

I believe that things
fly, that I don’t know
what they are or what
they might signify.

I've not read Cohen before but now I feel like I need to check out all the work. A fun little collection that makes for a quick read but worth revisiting as, like the best of microfiction or short stories of Lydia Davis, your mind invents all the details around the poems, making you feel like a creator along with Cohen. Worth the read.

[Kate]

Poetry! I had a hard time getting any purchase on these. The New York Times called them witty and I got all excited. They had their moments (chatty, evasive) but I had the feeling of reading a bunch of headlines without actually reading the articles. But maybe this caught me at the wrong time? Maybe I needed to slow down more? Or I just needed more of a thread of a fully formed things and fewer “reversals” like the article mentions.

[hooligan · Rating 3 out of 5]

some of these poems will make you feel like a spotlight has been casted over a feeling u could have never explained before. and then it will be immediately be followed by a one sentence piece, spaced out through the page. not all the short sentence poems are bad- some are very good , which makes it worse, because now i am left with wanting more and knowing that cohen can pull it off, and just chose not to. i love the idea of this book. the titular piece is fantastic.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these poems. They are simple and elegant and the imagery walks towards me as if it was always there, and why hadn’t I noticed it? The poet is brilliant, and funny, and warm, and close to hand. What she makes of this world - what she sees of this world - is something needing to be seen by more.

[Sarah Bean · Rating 1 out of 5]

i think this might be the first poetry collection i've read in good faith that i have truly hated. it kinda reads like what someone who hates contemporary poetry thinks poetry is. so many poems are just instapoem sentences that say very little. however, i loved "aubade." .5 of a star just for that poem.

[Nikita Ladd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cohen's use of the short line is masterful. The poems she writes, especially the longer ones, have a way of weaving narrative and moving image that is so potent and clean. Some of my favorite poems in the collection were: "Something," "Home Invasion," and "Dropping on Adam and Eve."

[Mary McAfoose · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few of these poems were just brilliant.

[Ivy · Rating 3 out of 5]

liked “something,” “rhubarb and garbage,” and “swagger”

[evelyn ❀(taylor’s version) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was nothing really special.

[sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

decent collection of poems; i liked the characterization and imagery

[John Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection, though the short poems miss more than they hit.