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Backup Singers
Poetry. Browning follows up her sold out debut, EITHER WAY I'M CELEBRATING, with an even rawer and starker, and again darkly humorous navigation of friendship, marriage, and motherhood. The result is a more overtly political assessment of the absurd deficit between what we're confronted with and what we're equipped with to deal with those confrontations: "It's a girl, / and the wires she needs // open her hands / before they're fists." Browning combats this deficit with relentless anaphora and repetition, reducing seemingly impossible relationships to their most basic element--a love that begets an unconditional loyalty: "I'm here! I didn't run!"
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published June 3, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 28, 2014
"What is real deserves to be undercut, what is a joke must be honored with solemnity.”
August 4, 2015
This has been my favorite book of poems so far in 2015. I just like Browning's voice throughout. It's fun but varied. I feel like the sections hold together nicely as sections, but also that the books adds up to something itself, and I don't always see that in collections of poems. I loved the parts of the long poem "Multifarious Array." The descriptions of the narratee's poems, for example, as containing "slippery electricity, of buckshot constellations, gravel rosaries" are original and poetic, yet also prosaic (this long sectioned poem is a prose poem, after all). As the book closes on short, simple, but amazing lyrics (I loved "Anachronism without Spider"), it feels like a final fugue to a great composition. This is an excellent book of poems.
May 22, 2014
Totally awesome. Read this great book of poetry ASAP.
October 16, 2020
Sharp and funny and totally original. This collection spoke to my Circulation department heart. I read this book with a tiny smirk on my face, both jealous and dazzled with each playful and inventive page.
April 23, 2014
Usually when Birds, LLC puts out a book I have a hard time reading it. I've already spent so much time with it, read various versions, offered my thoughts on them, dealt with designers and printers, the library of congress and more.
When I get the finished book in hand from the printer, all the work leading up to that point is still with me. It's difficult to break away from it and enjoy the book as a book, to move on from the pregnancy and enjoy the baby, so to speak.
When we put out Sommer Browning's Backup Singers I decided I wanted to overcome all that, so I read the book within month of getting it in hand. I'm so glad I did.
First of all, the structure. Challenging. The book begins with a longish sequence of mostly prose poem, “Rue Daguerre.” Beautiful. Clear, but slant. Dare I say, serious. Loaded with poems that perform a dazzling high wire act that teeters between sound and sense, that surprise and disarm—"suffix affixed like a tick like real money to the child cheating at Monopoly."
Section II, "Friend," is, in many ways, a more specific but also widened reinterpretation of Joe Brainard's I Remember that never uses those words, but makes brilliant use of repetition all it's own. "There were the beers / at Sophie's, the whiskeys / at Pete's, the beers at Millie's" and so on goes one poem. "Isn't it wasn't it isn't it so..." and "Chrissy. Chrissy. Chrissy. Chrissy." repeat others.
These are poems about the foolishness, romanticism and absurdity of youth, and the danger—driving "30 miles at night through pitch black counties without headlights using only my cellphone light to guide me"—but also more than that. There's a seriousness and sadness to these poems, a sense that very real, very "grown up" things are starting to happen and they aren't all pleasant. "Melissa is dead," repeats one poem toward the end of the section, and in another a different friend, or maybe the same, may or may not be dying.
Then there's another mainly prose section, “Multifarious Array,” followed by a short section of lineated poems, “Deep Cuts.” And one of those poems, “Safe Bets,” is on the back cover.
This book makes me step back—back up (haha)—and say, "whoa." It makes me feel my own writing is worthless and dumb (but that's probably my own issue). It makes me feel like I need to try harder, in my life and my writing, but also, hey, it's cool. Do what you can. Be yourself. But ultimately for me, and I hope for others, this book helps people live more, have more fun, be more crude, dumber and smarter, but also more genuine and sincere, weird and idiosyncratic, write better, be better, tougher—more loving and caring.
When I get the finished book in hand from the printer, all the work leading up to that point is still with me. It's difficult to break away from it and enjoy the book as a book, to move on from the pregnancy and enjoy the baby, so to speak.
When we put out Sommer Browning's Backup Singers I decided I wanted to overcome all that, so I read the book within month of getting it in hand. I'm so glad I did.
First of all, the structure. Challenging. The book begins with a longish sequence of mostly prose poem, “Rue Daguerre.” Beautiful. Clear, but slant. Dare I say, serious. Loaded with poems that perform a dazzling high wire act that teeters between sound and sense, that surprise and disarm—"suffix affixed like a tick like real money to the child cheating at Monopoly."
Section II, "Friend," is, in many ways, a more specific but also widened reinterpretation of Joe Brainard's I Remember that never uses those words, but makes brilliant use of repetition all it's own. "There were the beers / at Sophie's, the whiskeys / at Pete's, the beers at Millie's" and so on goes one poem. "Isn't it wasn't it isn't it so..." and "Chrissy. Chrissy. Chrissy. Chrissy." repeat others.
These are poems about the foolishness, romanticism and absurdity of youth, and the danger—driving "30 miles at night through pitch black counties without headlights using only my cellphone light to guide me"—but also more than that. There's a seriousness and sadness to these poems, a sense that very real, very "grown up" things are starting to happen and they aren't all pleasant. "Melissa is dead," repeats one poem toward the end of the section, and in another a different friend, or maybe the same, may or may not be dying.
Then there's another mainly prose section, “Multifarious Array,” followed by a short section of lineated poems, “Deep Cuts.” And one of those poems, “Safe Bets,” is on the back cover.
This book makes me step back—back up (haha)—and say, "whoa." It makes me feel my own writing is worthless and dumb (but that's probably my own issue). It makes me feel like I need to try harder, in my life and my writing, but also, hey, it's cool. Do what you can. Be yourself. But ultimately for me, and I hope for others, this book helps people live more, have more fun, be more crude, dumber and smarter, but also more genuine and sincere, weird and idiosyncratic, write better, be better, tougher—more loving and caring.
May 19, 2014
I really enjoyed this. Playful word choice and line breaks, masterful repetition - compelling, teetering on the edge of ridiculous - and narratives that don't have time to slow down and explain everything! The language will carry you along.
October 1, 2014
I loved this book. This writer makes me think in new ways about language, the world and myself. And she's funny.
December 22, 2014
Choosy readers choose Backup Singers. A book with a heart, and a hangover, and a totally singular fascination with language. This made me feel way smarter than I am.
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October 14, 2017Fun book! Browning is particularly good at describing sounds.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews