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Human Dark with Sugar
“Brenda Shaughnessy’s poems bristle with imperatives: ‘confuse me, spoon-feed me, stop the madness, decide.’ There are more direct orders in her first few pages than in six weeks of boot camp...Only Shaughnessy’s kidding. Or she is and she isn’t. If you just want to boss people around, you’re a control freak, but if you can joke about it, then your bossiness is leavened by a yeast that’s all too infrequent in contemporary poetry, that of humor.”—New York Times
“Shaughnessy’s voice is smart, sexy, self-aware, hip . . . consistently wry, and ever savvy.”—Harvard Review
“Brenda Shaughnessy . . . writes like the love-child of Mina Loy and Frank O’Hara.”—Exquisite Corpse
"In its worried acceptance of contradiction, its absolute refusal of sentimentality and its acute awareness of time's 'scarce infinity,' this is a brilliant, beautiful and essential continuation of the metaphysical verse tradition."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Human Dark with Sugar is both wonderfully inventive (studded with the strangenesses of ‘snownovas’ and ‘flukeprints’) and emotionally precise. Her ‘I’ is madly multidexterous—urgent, comic, mischievous—and the result is a new topography of the debates between heart and head.”—Matthea Harvey, a judge for the Laughlin Award
"Seriously playful, sexy, sharp-edged, and absolutely commanding throughout....Here you'll meet an 'I' boldly ready to take on the world and just itching to give 'You' some smart directives. So listen up."—Library Journal
In her second book, winner of the prestigious James Laughlin Award, Brenda Shaughnessy taps into themes that have inspired era after era of poets. Love. Sex. Pain. The heavens. The loss of time. The weird miracle of perception. Part confessional, part New York School, and part just plain lover of the English language, Shaughnessy distills the big questions into sharp rhythms and alluring lyrics. “You’re a tool, moon. / Now, noon. There’s a hero.”
Master of diverse dictions, she dwells here on quirky words, mouthfuls of consonance and assonance—anodyne, astrolabe, alizarin—then catches her readers up short with a string of powerful monosyllables. “I’ll take / a year of that. Just give it back to me.” In addition to its verbal play, Human Dark With Sugar demonstrates the poet’s ease in a variety of genres, from “Three Sorries” (in which the speaker concludes, “I’m not sorry. Not sorry at all”), to a sequence of prose poems on a lover’s body, to the discussion of a disturbing dream. In this caffeine jolt of a book, Shaughnessy confirms her status as a poet of intoxicating lines, pointed, poignant comments on love, and compelling abstract images —not the least of which is human dark with sugar.
Brenda Shaughnessy was raised in California and is an MFA graduate of Columbia University. She is the poetry editor for Tin House and has taught at several colleges, including Eugene Lang College and Princeton University. She lives in Brooklyn.
“Shaughnessy’s voice is smart, sexy, self-aware, hip . . . consistently wry, and ever savvy.”—Harvard Review
“Brenda Shaughnessy . . . writes like the love-child of Mina Loy and Frank O’Hara.”—Exquisite Corpse
"In its worried acceptance of contradiction, its absolute refusal of sentimentality and its acute awareness of time's 'scarce infinity,' this is a brilliant, beautiful and essential continuation of the metaphysical verse tradition."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Human Dark with Sugar is both wonderfully inventive (studded with the strangenesses of ‘snownovas’ and ‘flukeprints’) and emotionally precise. Her ‘I’ is madly multidexterous—urgent, comic, mischievous—and the result is a new topography of the debates between heart and head.”—Matthea Harvey, a judge for the Laughlin Award
"Seriously playful, sexy, sharp-edged, and absolutely commanding throughout....Here you'll meet an 'I' boldly ready to take on the world and just itching to give 'You' some smart directives. So listen up."—Library Journal
In her second book, winner of the prestigious James Laughlin Award, Brenda Shaughnessy taps into themes that have inspired era after era of poets. Love. Sex. Pain. The heavens. The loss of time. The weird miracle of perception. Part confessional, part New York School, and part just plain lover of the English language, Shaughnessy distills the big questions into sharp rhythms and alluring lyrics. “You’re a tool, moon. / Now, noon. There’s a hero.”
Master of diverse dictions, she dwells here on quirky words, mouthfuls of consonance and assonance—anodyne, astrolabe, alizarin—then catches her readers up short with a string of powerful monosyllables. “I’ll take / a year of that. Just give it back to me.” In addition to its verbal play, Human Dark With Sugar demonstrates the poet’s ease in a variety of genres, from “Three Sorries” (in which the speaker concludes, “I’m not sorry. Not sorry at all”), to a sequence of prose poems on a lover’s body, to the discussion of a disturbing dream. In this caffeine jolt of a book, Shaughnessy confirms her status as a poet of intoxicating lines, pointed, poignant comments on love, and compelling abstract images —not the least of which is human dark with sugar.
Brenda Shaughnessy was raised in California and is an MFA graduate of Columbia University. She is the poetry editor for Tin House and has taught at several colleges, including Eugene Lang College and Princeton University. She lives in Brooklyn.
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2008
10 people are currently reading
553 people want to read
About the author
Brenda Shaughnessy
17 books133 followersBrenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan, in 1970 and grew up in Southern California. She received her B.A. in literature and women's studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and she earned an M.F.A. at Columbia University.
She is the author of Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Interior with Sudden Joy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), which was nominated for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Norma Farber First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Bomb, Boston Review, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere.
About her work, the poet Richard Howard writes: "The resonance of Shaughnessy's poems is that of someone speaking out of an ecstasy and into an ecstasy, momentarily pausing to let us in on the fun, the pain."
Shaughnessy is the recipient of a Bunting Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a Japan/U.S. Friendship Commission Artist Fellowship. She is the poetry editor at Tin House magazine and currently teaches creative writing at Princeton University and Eugene Lang College at the New School.
She is the author of Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Interior with Sudden Joy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), which was nominated for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Norma Farber First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Bomb, Boston Review, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere.
About her work, the poet Richard Howard writes: "The resonance of Shaughnessy's poems is that of someone speaking out of an ecstasy and into an ecstasy, momentarily pausing to let us in on the fun, the pain."
Shaughnessy is the recipient of a Bunting Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a Japan/U.S. Friendship Commission Artist Fellowship. She is the poetry editor at Tin House magazine and currently teaches creative writing at Princeton University and Eugene Lang College at the New School.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 70 reviews
November 22, 2008
This book is the chick-lit of poetry. Brenday Shaunnessy is great at the art of disconnection to others but also offers nothing of redeeming value that you can take with you after a five minute read. There is a street smartness about her work. Then there is the smartness gained by reading, intellectual curiosity and emotional intelligence that is not reflected anywhere. Lines like: "Throw your love until it sticks." or, "At our miserable dinner even my own chewing disgusted me." reek of sit-com one-liners and humor. She speaks of "vulnerable as a lemon-peel" and how "we need a poet for the nanosecond" as if this was the future of American poetry. What she has to offer is: "a heart as hard and small and uni-purpose as a tack." I think that describes her poetry as well.
That this book won the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American poets, bodes ill for American Poetry and and the rest of us who give a damn.
That this book won the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American poets, bodes ill for American Poetry and and the rest of us who give a damn.
January 6, 2010
Often times when I (I was going to say peruse, but I don't think that's casual enough...) wander through the poetry section of the library I'll pull out a book or two... or however many it takes, until one grabs me. This book did just that. After casually looking at some of the lines in the poems, I thought I had a smash hit.
It's a strange book though. While many of the individual lines of the poem are clutch, I rarely felt like that about her poems when taken as a whole. I mean, who wouldn't think "Why do we only get two years in exchage for three summers? A full year stolen by mosquitoes." or "what world is made, that made us that we keep/ making and making to replace the dreaming at last./ Stop the terrible dreaming." are great lines? I certainly thought they were.
But I wasn't reading a book of lines. I was reading a book of poems.
It's a strange book though. While many of the individual lines of the poem are clutch, I rarely felt like that about her poems when taken as a whole. I mean, who wouldn't think "Why do we only get two years in exchage for three summers? A full year stolen by mosquitoes." or "what world is made, that made us that we keep/ making and making to replace the dreaming at last./ Stop the terrible dreaming." are great lines? I certainly thought they were.
But I wasn't reading a book of lines. I was reading a book of poems.
July 1, 2008
My review of this collection is now available on the Gently Read Literature website:
http://gentlyread.wordpress.com/2008/...
***
3 3/4 stars.
***
I was a big fan of Brenda Shaughnessy's first collection ('Interior With Sudden Joy')and it's probably not so fair to compare two different collections, but this one was disappointing to me in comparison and did not rise to my expectations.
Whereas the first collection seemed quirkily opaque and ornate, this one seemed more transparent and plain (and maybe even a little bit too close for comfort to bland and borderline cliched).
Whereas the first collection seemed like a fizzy concoction and strangely dangerous elixir, this one seemed more like a seltzer water that was only very midly carbonated.
It seemed weak on some level.
I'm not going to say too much here, though, because I am planning to review this book for 'Gently Read Literature' soon.
http://gentlyread.wordpress.com/2008/...
***
3 3/4 stars.
***
I was a big fan of Brenda Shaughnessy's first collection ('Interior With Sudden Joy')and it's probably not so fair to compare two different collections, but this one was disappointing to me in comparison and did not rise to my expectations.
Whereas the first collection seemed quirkily opaque and ornate, this one seemed more transparent and plain (and maybe even a little bit too close for comfort to bland and borderline cliched).
Whereas the first collection seemed like a fizzy concoction and strangely dangerous elixir, this one seemed more like a seltzer water that was only very midly carbonated.
It seemed weak on some level.
I'm not going to say too much here, though, because I am planning to review this book for 'Gently Read Literature' soon.
August 13, 2008
Human Dark With Sugar by Brenda Shaughnessy arrived in the mail from the American Academy of Poets and I was pleased because I haven't read a book of poetry in some time. I think that it is only fair that I review this book on this, the last day of National Poetry Month. This second book of poetry from Shaughnessy won the James Laughlin Award.
The first section of the book is Anodyne, also known as a pain-killer. This section of the book is not euphoric by any means. It is almost as if she is attempting to kill the pain with the sharpness of her words. For instance in "I'm Over the Moon:"
"How long do I try to get water from a stone?/It's like having a bad boyfriend in a good band.// Better off alone. I'm going to write hard/and fast into you, moon, face-f**king.//"
The second section of the book is Ambrosia, from the Greek mean of food or drink of the gods that confers immortality on the consumer. Is the narrator of Shaughnessy's poems interested in immortality? One of my favorite poems from this section is "Three Sorries," particularly the "1. I'm Sorry" section of the poem:
"Soon 1. born 1970
2. Cried: all along
3. Loved: you really so very much and no others
blurred into: 1. begging off for the dog-years behavior
2. extra heart hidden in sock drawer
3. undetected slept with others"
It seems as though she really is not sorry for her actions or the events leading up to the incident. It's amazing how many of these poems appear apologetic and wistful on the surface, but then turn to sarcasm and bleakness.
The third section is Astrolabe or astronomical instrument to surveying, locating, and predicting the positions of the sun, moon, and stars. I think the best illustration of this concept is Shaughnessy's "A Poet's Poem."
"I will get the word freshened out of this poem.// I put it in the first line, then moved it to the second./ and now it won't come out.// It's stuck. I'm so frustrated,/ so I went out to my little porch all covered in snow// and watched the icicles drip, as I smoked/a cigarette.//" The poem ends quizzically: "I can't stand myself."
"No Such Thing as One Bee" is another poem that illustrates this need to pinpoint a location. Shaughnessy uses a narrator that is unsure of where they are in life and how they fit into the greater scheme. Where it is a busy worker bee or a bee that goes out to collect pollen. I guess you could almost equate it to the Bee movie with Jerry Seinfeld.
Overall, this is one of the better poetry books I have read in some time. I love the sarcastic and bleak language used by Shaughnessy in her poems. It's the darkest side of humanity she examines, and she tries not to sugarcoat it, but sometimes, she just can't help herself.
The first section of the book is Anodyne, also known as a pain-killer. This section of the book is not euphoric by any means. It is almost as if she is attempting to kill the pain with the sharpness of her words. For instance in "I'm Over the Moon:"
"How long do I try to get water from a stone?/It's like having a bad boyfriend in a good band.// Better off alone. I'm going to write hard/and fast into you, moon, face-f**king.//"
The second section of the book is Ambrosia, from the Greek mean of food or drink of the gods that confers immortality on the consumer. Is the narrator of Shaughnessy's poems interested in immortality? One of my favorite poems from this section is "Three Sorries," particularly the "1. I'm Sorry" section of the poem:
"Soon 1. born 1970
2. Cried: all along
3. Loved: you really so very much and no others
blurred into: 1. begging off for the dog-years behavior
2. extra heart hidden in sock drawer
3. undetected slept with others"
It seems as though she really is not sorry for her actions or the events leading up to the incident. It's amazing how many of these poems appear apologetic and wistful on the surface, but then turn to sarcasm and bleakness.
The third section is Astrolabe or astronomical instrument to surveying, locating, and predicting the positions of the sun, moon, and stars. I think the best illustration of this concept is Shaughnessy's "A Poet's Poem."
"I will get the word freshened out of this poem.// I put it in the first line, then moved it to the second./ and now it won't come out.// It's stuck. I'm so frustrated,/ so I went out to my little porch all covered in snow// and watched the icicles drip, as I smoked/a cigarette.//" The poem ends quizzically: "I can't stand myself."
"No Such Thing as One Bee" is another poem that illustrates this need to pinpoint a location. Shaughnessy uses a narrator that is unsure of where they are in life and how they fit into the greater scheme. Where it is a busy worker bee or a bee that goes out to collect pollen. I guess you could almost equate it to the Bee movie with Jerry Seinfeld.
Overall, this is one of the better poetry books I have read in some time. I love the sarcastic and bleak language used by Shaughnessy in her poems. It's the darkest side of humanity she examines, and she tries not to sugarcoat it, but sometimes, she just can't help herself.
August 28, 2015
I was let down by Human Dark With Sugar. As the winner of the James Laughlin Award judged in part by Matthea Harvey, a poet whose work thrills me, Brenda Shaughnessy's collection seemed disjointed, the poems themselves stuck in mid-draft with more editing to do or maybe having undergone too much editing. The diction stands out as mesmerizing, but the syntax, the halting, the overall ruggedness of getting from top to bottom of each poem took away from the experience of lovely words. I really wanted to like this collection because it contains: "How long do I try to get water from a stone? / It's like having a bad boyfriend in a good band." and "The voice, is it part of the body?" and the poem "Me In Paradise" an overall winner. Unfortunately, those highlights did not save the reading experience.
February 23, 2013
Just re-read. I can't believe THIS book won an award, and her first book (a poetry gift from God (not the actual title)) didn't. What is the deal with that. Why didn't anyone ask me?
February 19, 2020
4.5 Beautiful read. I especially loved the obscure sounding metaphors that you somehow understood instinctually. And also, how she managed to be sexual without being vulgar.
Read
November 18, 2008Winner of the James Laughlin Award, this book is stunning. I liked her first book, “Interior with sudden joy,” just fine... language play, passion, etc. But here, in her second book, there’s more meat along with those same early qualities. Shaughnessy is an interesting poet to read for sound -- her work sometimes seems almost formal, with interior rhyme, interesting rhythm. It’s tempting to look for hidden/buried forms. But I don’t think they’re there. Instead, it’s an organic conversation of sounds, which I really love. This is one to read again, I think.
August 19, 2008
I really liked her first book, so I have high expectations for this collection. I'm only about 15 poems in thus far, and I have to say: I'm underwhelmed. I'll write more when I've read it "for real"-- hopefully it gets better?
*****
It didn't get much better for me. The voice and diction in this collection is so much less charged and jeweled than her first. Disappointing.
*****
It didn't get much better for me. The voice and diction in this collection is so much less charged and jeweled than her first. Disappointing.
March 11, 2009
This is a stupendous book!
Read
March 16, 2022It’s okay, you’re an innocent
with the brilliance of an animal
stuffing yourself sick on a kill.
with the brilliance of an animal
stuffing yourself sick on a kill.
March 6, 2024
I wrote on the title page of this book "apparently the World of Poetry world just adores Brenda Shaughnessy...and why not?"
If I could put a title on my Review, that would be it. I had not read a full book of her poetry before tackling this wonderful entry, but I am certainly glad I did. Weirdly, it took me a long time to finish it, for two reasons: one, I usually am reading six, or seven books of poetry at the same time; and two, I had left this book on my desk at a Co-working space in downtown Tulsa which I hardly ever visit, now that I have a proper home office.
But, as they say, excuses are like noses, everyone has one. Well, that's not really what they say, but I don't use foul language in my reviews ;-)
The best way I can describe Shaughnessy's style is guileless. In Cameron Crowe's under-appreciated film "Vanilla Sky" (based on the hit film "Abran Los Ojos") Tom Cruise's character says of Penelope Cruz's character, as he is falling in love with her, "she is the last guileless woman in New York City".
That kind of guileless. Shaughnessy's work is self-aware, and self-effacing, but with wit and precision that many poets would kill for. For example:
"It's true that snow takes on gold from sunset
and red from rearlights. But that's occasional.
What is constant is white,
or is that only sight, a reflection of eyewhites
and light? Because snow reflects only itself
self upon self upon self..."
From "Why Is the Color of Snow?"
Many of the poems here are Odes, or Epistrophe's to friends, lovers, her husband, the poet Craig Morgan Teicher. Imagine two poets being married. What would that be like.
Well, read her wonderful book, and (somewhat) find out.
If I could put a title on my Review, that would be it. I had not read a full book of her poetry before tackling this wonderful entry, but I am certainly glad I did. Weirdly, it took me a long time to finish it, for two reasons: one, I usually am reading six, or seven books of poetry at the same time; and two, I had left this book on my desk at a Co-working space in downtown Tulsa which I hardly ever visit, now that I have a proper home office.
But, as they say, excuses are like noses, everyone has one. Well, that's not really what they say, but I don't use foul language in my reviews ;-)
The best way I can describe Shaughnessy's style is guileless. In Cameron Crowe's under-appreciated film "Vanilla Sky" (based on the hit film "Abran Los Ojos") Tom Cruise's character says of Penelope Cruz's character, as he is falling in love with her, "she is the last guileless woman in New York City".
That kind of guileless. Shaughnessy's work is self-aware, and self-effacing, but with wit and precision that many poets would kill for. For example:
"It's true that snow takes on gold from sunset
and red from rearlights. But that's occasional.
What is constant is white,
or is that only sight, a reflection of eyewhites
and light? Because snow reflects only itself
self upon self upon self..."
From "Why Is the Color of Snow?"
Many of the poems here are Odes, or Epistrophe's to friends, lovers, her husband, the poet Craig Morgan Teicher. Imagine two poets being married. What would that be like.
Well, read her wonderful book, and (somewhat) find out.
Read
January 1, 2024this future corpse;
no matter how many lovers she, her body, and I have,
only you know the curvature that stops your heart,
that’s the truth of it, only you could hear
the mess of breaths and cries I make splitting open,
my voice cracking in your arms
even when this corpse is a corpse.
Because it all happened to me, the real actual me.
I am yours. I am still I.
----------------------------------
“Even the clumsiest fate is perfectly shaped,
so the view took over looking
but the sweetest thing I’ve ever known
is obscene with a beautiful
sugar rotted down to its truth.
Loving you a serious accidental shame
and day flatulates into night,
trips and falls in front of millions
into morning.
In thrall to this pocus:
the end of fear starts
with such an annihilating blush,
with such a stutter.”
---------------------------
“that I could be a bee,
that I could choose to hurt you,
and it would not be my choice?”
----------------------------
“When your lover left, no one
could find you except
in hurt rage. Now you’ve
left and I still can’t find you.
I can hurt. I can rage.
I was never your lover.”
no matter how many lovers she, her body, and I have,
only you know the curvature that stops your heart,
that’s the truth of it, only you could hear
the mess of breaths and cries I make splitting open,
my voice cracking in your arms
even when this corpse is a corpse.
Because it all happened to me, the real actual me.
I am yours. I am still I.
----------------------------------
“Even the clumsiest fate is perfectly shaped,
so the view took over looking
but the sweetest thing I’ve ever known
is obscene with a beautiful
sugar rotted down to its truth.
Loving you a serious accidental shame
and day flatulates into night,
trips and falls in front of millions
into morning.
In thrall to this pocus:
the end of fear starts
with such an annihilating blush,
with such a stutter.”
---------------------------
“that I could be a bee,
that I could choose to hurt you,
and it would not be my choice?”
----------------------------
“When your lover left, no one
could find you except
in hurt rage. Now you’ve
left and I still can’t find you.
I can hurt. I can rage.
I was never your lover.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 31, 2025
It’s hard to believe that this collection won the James Laughlin Award (named after the visionary founder of New Directions Publishing), which tries so hard to be hip, wants so badly to win the affections of the academy, and is so desperate to be personally attractive, like starfish suckerpads, and emotionally transparent, like that dress so “extravagantly feminine / you could see my ovaries through it” (“One Love Story, Eight Takes,” p. 21). For example:
“Throw your love until it sticks, and know
you’ll only know it stuck
if it ends up sticking. In case it does
in the end, in the beginning
just say, “This is the one.” Whether or not
that’s true, trick yourself
into it being true, so you’re someone
who says truths.”
—from “Replaceable until You’re Not,” p. 37
And then there’s “Straight’s the New Gay” (p. 44), which reads like a diary entry written by Sylvia Plath just before she put her head in the oven to quell any rumors that she wasn’t 110% straight, too. Which, of course, must be followed by “This Loved Body” and its Kabuki performance of heterosexual sex, “extra naked.”
Favorite Poem
“Don’t Be So Small, Poet” (for Susan Sontag)
“Throw your love until it sticks, and know
you’ll only know it stuck
if it ends up sticking. In case it does
in the end, in the beginning
just say, “This is the one.” Whether or not
that’s true, trick yourself
into it being true, so you’re someone
who says truths.”
—from “Replaceable until You’re Not,” p. 37
And then there’s “Straight’s the New Gay” (p. 44), which reads like a diary entry written by Sylvia Plath just before she put her head in the oven to quell any rumors that she wasn’t 110% straight, too. Which, of course, must be followed by “This Loved Body” and its Kabuki performance of heterosexual sex, “extra naked.”
Favorite Poem
“Don’t Be So Small, Poet” (for Susan Sontag)
July 19, 2017
I don't always understand other people's poetry. Which I usually just take to mean that I need to keep the book, and re-read it periodically. I feel like - in all honesty - I'm not necessarily MEANT to understand every poem the first time I read it. I feel like I will re-read it at some later date, and - if I'm meant to understand it then - I will.
THAT BEING SAID... reading this book spurred me to write a poem of my own. Which happens less often than I'd like to admit. But I wrote one last night. Sooo... YAY! :D
THAT BEING SAID... reading this book spurred me to write a poem of my own. Which happens less often than I'd like to admit. But I wrote one last night. Sooo... YAY! :D
August 5, 2018
It's been a while since I sat down and read a whole book of poetry just for the hell of it. And I think I may have ruined the experience for a while, because I can't imagine many books living up to this one.
I loved this. It felt so sneakily personal, in the way that the best poems do. So human, so female, molecular, large - lots of things simultaneously.
Definitely recommend it if you love a good collection of poems.
I loved this. It felt so sneakily personal, in the way that the best poems do. So human, so female, molecular, large - lots of things simultaneously.
Definitely recommend it if you love a good collection of poems.
October 28, 2021
so I have no problems telling you
why you cried over the third lost
metal or the mousetrap. I knew
that orgasms weren't your fault
and that feeling of keeping solid
in yourself but wanting an ecstatic
black hole was just bad beauty.
Certain loves were perfect
in the daytime and had every
right to express carnally behind
the copy machine and there are
no hard feelings for the boozy
sodomy and sorry XX daisy chain,
whenever it felt right for you.
Read
March 25, 2023- i find poems in the second person and also about the pain of men/love and children.....not very accessible and also very shallow in general (im not saying this is a valid critique)
- ugh what a pain to read this poetry collection
- i just picked it up in the library bc of the blurbs and like,,,,who is writing these blurbs! why are u lying 😭
- also just! it's not well written
- bah
- ugh what a pain to read this poetry collection
- i just picked it up in the library bc of the blurbs and like,,,,who is writing these blurbs! why are u lying 😭
- also just! it's not well written
- bah
October 2, 2025
“Sheer fabric trailing through 4am
I thought it was opaque and earlier.
I know you know I know.
And the mirror multiplies inside.
The world is no bigger, but next time
do the math,
because I wanted to know none
of what I now know twice.”
3.5/5 i really liked some poems, but really didn’t like some others. kinda hit or miss for me. i’m glad someone left this lying around at work!
I thought it was opaque and earlier.
I know you know I know.
And the mirror multiplies inside.
The world is no bigger, but next time
do the math,
because I wanted to know none
of what I now know twice.”
3.5/5 i really liked some poems, but really didn’t like some others. kinda hit or miss for me. i’m glad someone left this lying around at work!
September 4, 2017
My god. It reads so easily, this collection, you can just breeze through it, but it's also so clever and there are so many hidden gems in the lines that you have to slow right the fuck down. Brilliant, brilliant. I have a head full of quotes. Read it.
January 17, 2018
Collection of poems that run a bit too conversational and scattered for me, for the most part.
June 8, 2018
I particularly enjoyed Why is the color of Snow and Don't be so Small Poet.
February 8, 2019
It is beyond me that anyone would have publish, the immature and possibly mentally ill garbage that this woman writes. It is not worthy of being reviewed, it is the jottings of a half wit!
June 30, 2020
I'm Over the Moon.
Why is the Color of Snow?
Why is the Color of Snow?
August 23, 2020
i tried reading this in like february and couldn’t get into it and i decided to revisit it during the sealey challenge (that i am behind on lol) and it was a really good collection. some of the poems are kinda dense but it’s worth all the effort imo. i rly like brenda shaughnessy
September 1, 2020
The poetry in this collection is intimate, masterfully crafted, and demands to be confronted.
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January 1, 2021Well i found this book at someone recommendation list. I dont know how to describe it, most of the poems looks irrelevant to me. Only a few poems that so great and touching.
November 25, 2021
Honestly so disappointing, moreso because I had such high expectations.
February 14, 2022
Still trying to figure her out.
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