So Much Synth

by Brenda Shaughnessy

"Shaughnessy's particular genius . . . is utterly poetic, but essayistic in scope."— The New Yorker "Brenda Shaughnessy's work is a good place to start for any passionate woman feeling daunted by poetry." — Cosmopolitan "Shaughnessy's voice is smart, sexy, self-aware, hip . . . consistently wry, and ever savvy."— Harvard Review Subversions of idiom and cliché punctuate Shaughnessy's fourth collection as she approaches middle age and revisits the memories, romances, and music of adolescence. So Much Synth is a brave and ferocious collection composed of equal parts femininity, pain, pleasure, and synthesizer. While Shaughnessy tenderly winces at her youthful excesses, we humbly catch glimpses of our own. From "Never Ever": Late is a synonym for dead which is a euphemism
for ever. Ever is a double-edged word, at once itself and its own always
and always some other time. In the category of cleave, then. To cut and to cling to,
somewhat mournfully… Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan and grew up in Southern California. She is the author of three books of poetry, including Human Dark with Sugar , winner of the James Laughlin Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Our Andromeda , which was a New York Times Book Review "100 Notable Books of 2013." She is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer, Fiction

88 pages, Hardcover

First published May 10, 2016

About the author

Brenda 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.

Reviews

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

So Much Synth first caught my eye back in April with its dynamic last line of the introducing poem titled, I Have a Time Machine: “the past is so horribly fast.” I hurried on to request it from the publisher (Copper Canyon Press); and was beyond ecstatic and grateful when my copy finally arrived in my hands at the start of this month.


Subversions of idiom and cliché punctuate Shaughnessy's fourth collection as she approaches middle age and revisits the memories, romances, and music of adolescence. So Much Synth is a brave and ferocious collection composed of equal parts femininity, pain, pleasure, and synthesizer. While Shaughnessy tenderly winces at her youthful excesses, we humbly catch glimpses of our own.

Though I caught myself feeling a bit over-my-head with some poems at the start, the pace and momentum returned with the piece "Is There Something I Should Know?," which at a whopping 30 pages never lost me for even one sentence. It succeeds immensely in capturing numerous themes of adolescence over the course of time, including periods (“blood and mess and cramps and hormones”), Judy Blume, books, angst, anxiety, catcalling, body-image and more.

On that note, I think it's best now if I let the words and pieces speak for themselves with these quote excerpts:

“Adolescence is all absolutes: if bad, one must be the very worst
to avoid being mistaken for average.”

“I’d hide and lose and seek and find myself in every page:
laughing, rereading and then re-rereading out loud, disbelieving the details till my system could absorb them like the nutrients they were.”

“I’m not even sure anything happened to me.
Or to whom everything happened.”

And the fact that I read “Oh god, is there any music as good as what you heard
at fourteen?” the day I rediscovered this emo band I used to listen to at exactly that age was astronomical for me. [gets war flashbacks from the emo days]

I think it goes without saying that So Much Synth was not only beautiful and raw but “real and aware of pain.” And I'm eager to continue on with Shaughnessy's past and future works.

ARC kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Expected publication: October 10th, 2017

Note: I’m an Amazon Affiliate. If you’re interested in buying So Much Synth, just click on the image below to go through my link. I’ll make a small commission!


This review and more can be found on my blog.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suspect some of So Much Synth might appeal most to readers of a certain age or to people with a certain (questionable, perhaps) fondness for music from the early 80s. Fortunately, I fall right into the overlap of that Venn diagram.

"A Mix Tape: 'Don't You (Forget About Me)'" captures exactly the labor, hope, and doubt that went into the making and giving of those handmade compilations: "Mix tape: private language, lost art, / first book, cri de coeur, X-ray, diary. / An exquisitely direct and sweet / misunderstanding." And the long and essayistic "Is There Something I Should Know?" gets right so much about girlhood, puberty, and what women lose in the process of becoming women. (And yes, the title's a nod to Duran Duran. Have fun getting rid of that earworm.)

How do these poems work on me? "They run like a stocking / down the leg of the mind." What truth did the book offer me about vision and fascination? "It was never going / to be a masterpiece, we know that, / but it does hold fast whatever art is in us, / that thing that blooms like failure and is."

[Ricky Novaes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sorry, to the book, for all the folded ears. Thank you, to the author, for pausing without picking up the pace. Pair this read with the soundtrack it provides, and listen to the music it makes.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Shaughnessy's 'Interior with Sudden Joy' collection did not exist, I probably would have given this one five stars instead of four. The poems are personal without alienating. Shaughnessy's love of words and sounds is at its strongest in years. A perfect collection!

[Elizabeth]

As heard on The New Yorker Radio Hour: http://feeds.wnyc.org/~r/newyorkerrad...

[Kevin Hogan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Closer to 3.5 stars than 3.

This was a book of poetry that I enjoyed intellectually, even though it didn't speak to me emotionally as much as I would have liked. There is a certain playfulness with language that I appreciate ("The day has come: / a dusty gust of disgusting August"), but these moments always stood out to me a little within their poems rather than feeling fully integrated.

The strongest pieces in this book were also the longest -- the Mix Tapes, and especially "Is There Something I Should Know?" which touches on so many aspects of being a girl, being a woman, in between, relationships, expectations.... It's a primer.

[Cheyenne · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 ⭐ CW: discussions of rape culture, domestic abuse

So Much Synth by Brenda Shaughnessy is a poetry collection that was recommended to me by the same friend who recommended the last poetry book I read. I liked this one a lot better! The voice was clearer to me, and I liked the subject matter. It was more of story and played with philosophy. Shaughnessy discusses the nature of our thoughts, her experiences of living with other lesbians, her experience with an abusive partner, discusses the inner turmoil of puberty and that special hell that is growing up a girl in a society that doesn't value them. Again, not so much a review as it is vibes. I just really liked this, and maybe I can find more like it.

[Haines Eason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for the journey if not for each poem on its own. Also: I am a man guilty as charged—you’ll understand if you read this book. But I am also a victim, and thus I felt safe in this space—this place of remembering youth in general, but also of lost girlhood and rage, of fear and yet forgiving.

[Kylie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the only reason I didn't enjoy this collection as much as I wanted to was because the stakes weren't so high. A lot of the poetry I love is a punch to the face, and this is...something else. It's very different from what I'm used to. Hands down, the best parts were about the poet's experiences in "the dyke loft" onward through her experiences during adolescence. Those were the most gripping, the ones I got lost in. Shaughnessy has this one line at the very beginning of the collection, though, that was my favorite from the whole work: "the past is so horribly fast."

...

"When I am really feeling, / I get very tired, I fall asleep.."

"There is no color but what's already / inside the eye."

"There is no body without life. / There is no mind without body. / There is no without."
-McQueen Is Dead. Long Live McQueen.


"Not even ink makes / the best ink; wine / better spreads a stain / and the mouth is / already wet - the better to contain a fire / or catch a fish / or tell a story sharpening / the point of the last / meal..."
-Artisinal


"If I were fourteen again, I wouldn't be in this situation now, / trying to write without a pen. Isn't blood a woman's ink?"

"During the 700 days I began to understand / that when love happened, I'd become real."
-Is There Something I Should Know?

[Chris Roberts · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dream deep
water walked across Jesus
startled, I awakened
still in my pajamas
I kicked open the front door
a briar patch
one protracted ouch!
I journeyed up to the undulating road
threw out my thumb
and deposited myself into a rainbow ice cream truck
it left me off at the marshland
met with with Edgar Allan Poe and Dracula
we smoked hash in an upside down cathedral
nearby was a lunatic asylum
Ward C, doors deadbolt locked
twilight it began
the barbarous females
roared maternally
impaled on spiked fences.

Chris Roberts

[Kate Mildew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Brenda Shaughnessy and this book has a lot of indulgence, but she pulls it off. I disliked the two mixtape poems and I think the collection would be stronger without them. A really enjoyable read that stays cohesive while the poems change from visually rich and more opaque, to deeply nostalgic diary style poems. A joy to read!

[Leah Horlick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mixed-race poet Brenda Sahguhnessy telling it like is is about puberty and the horrors of growing up feminine. Yes.

[Jonathan Tennis · Rating 2 out of 5]

A poetry mentor recommended this. There were a few poems I liked / resonated with me - I Have a Time Machine; Why I stayed, 1997-2001; A Mix Tape x 2; Is There Something I Should Know?

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Another very earnest collection... seems to be the unintentional theme for my poetry reading this fall. I didn't always like the conversational tone of the poems, but there were many poignant moments that redeemed them for me. For once, though, I liked a long poem! "Is There Something I Should Know?" covers a lot of ground (the overarching theme being girlhood) effortlessly, and I kind of feel like I want to print it out now to have ready for my niece to read in a year or two, since she is quickly approaching her "700 days." On another note, the music references didn't always work for me in a literal sense, but the spirit of them did. "Living Will," one of the early poems, was a perfect encapsulation of my struggle with this collection as a whole: there were so many knock-out lines that then felt cheapened by some of the more obvious (dare I say indulgent) wordplay. Taken all together, I guess it was a mixed bag for me, but definitely an enjoyable collection and well worth a read, particularly for anyone who has ever been an obsessive fan of music.

[b (tobias forge's version) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard of Brenda Shaughnessy's work on a poetry podcast... some indeterminate amount of time before the pandemic. I filed her away as a poet to get to at some point, and then didn't until my current madcap poetry binge, and was pleased to find that I had stumbled into checking out yet another volume of queer verse. The pieces I like best are the ones about girlhood and adolescence, especially "Is There Something I Should Know?" which has the following line that stopped me short:

"But if I suffered sharply, I could scarcely trace it soft:"

And, I mean, wow, right? That thumps along so satisfying, so Dickinson-esque. It feels good in ear and mouth. It's smooth and round and contained, despite the colon that draws you deeper into the long poem in which it's nestled. That's a line to use as a social media bio, write on the cover of your notebook, tattoo on your heart if not your skin.

I think this is a collection I can try to tag along with and take something from.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about nostalgia, memories, sexuality, desire, relationships, and music.

from Living Will: "If I make a decision now, but die / before enacting it, does my last decision stay / in limbo, alive without a body? // Or does it die with me, becoming no decision, / undoing my last choice on this earth as if / I had already died before I died?"

from Why I Stayed, 1997-2001: "you threw thing at me / when I said things // you didn't like, as if my words were / things I threw at you first. / It made sense to you."

from Is There Something I Should Know?: "Every month it felt like something sordid and revolting thing / was happening to me, and it was. // No one discussed it or acknowledged it / even though we ALL READ THE JUDY BLUME."

[Carla Seravalli]

“I don’t know how much of my own story
is true and what I’ve had to believe.”
(“A Mix Tape: ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’”, side B)

in the past year I’ve been told by both my partner and my poetry instructor (who read manuscripts of this collection), cautionarily, “you can’t think like that.” I’m in second puberty. I am terrified of dysfunction; that there is something inherent and completely alien about me that prevents me from functioning. But someone out there cares, and more importantly, knows.

Also, the first break in:

“... I’m so inside
out I evaporated entirely already as August does,
my actual dress shredded at the seams—“
(“Dress Form”)

is a dumb powerful enjambment.

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shaughnessy almost embodies the music of a 1980s in these poems: they overrun with sound, with references, with imaginary. These poems are dense, and yet not heavy, but they do roll in your mouth and are greatly improved, even more poetry generally, but being read out loud and felt on tongue. That said, you do need to know the music of the 1980s to fully appreciate what Shaughnessy is doing here and many may find it self-indulgent--although though are welcoming and accessible for otherwise personal poetry.

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh god, is there any music as good as what you heard / at fourteen?

these poems reflect on adolesence with an expert deluge of words, sometimes as a flowing river of sound associations, sometimes in tumbling syllables, and occasionally in tight blocks that showcase shaughnessy's unique control of form. they're at times overwhelming in a way that makes the memories more recognizable, translating some of the mystic cruelty and horror and wonder and confusion of girlhood in ways I've been waiting for. I think this is a deeply rereadable collection.

[anolinde · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm just gonna preface this by saying that I really do not care for poetry, so please feel free to disregard my opinion lol, but I did not understand many of these poems (the first section in particular was indecipherable to me). The main standouts were "A Mix Tape: Don't You (Forget About Me)" and "Is There Something I Should Know?" (especially the lines "That girl's long gone / That girl didn't make it / No way that girl's gonna make it"). Otherwise... I still do not like poetry lol.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall this is a beautiful collection, funny and deep in equal measure. But I really want to urge you all to seek out the long poem it is built around, “Is There Something I Should Know?” It is a gut punch, that describes coming of age as a girl more accurately than maybe anything I’ve read before with lovely specific detail and righteous anger. Really gorgeous.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely love Brenda Shaughnessy, and this book pf poems has corroborated that adoration! Her work feels self-interrogative while also seeming to reflect my own internal musings and maybe that of many others. I would recommend this as a perfect work for those wanting to read some amazing Bi poems. A great followup to her classic collection, Our Andromeda.

[Jennifer AW · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little too clever and self-aware for me at times to declare it a GREAT read, but it is certainly good. Worth a look. And probably (note to self) worth going back and looking (i.e. reading) again at some point.

[André Habet]

I really dug the first section of this mostly prose poetry collection. The so much synth section was very interesting in how it used music as a motif. The long poem in that section was my favorite as far as its structure and its deft tone management as it culminates in blood sparkles.

[Jesica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best poem : Is There Something I Should Know. Everyone needs to read this poem!

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dreamt I read this book and so then I had to check it out from the library. It was wonderful, urgent, smart, provocative. Highly recommend reading it in your dreams as well as real life.

[kiwi · Rating 4 out of 5]

shaugnessy writes like a dream—an ugly, raw one of Truth. love it.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exciting new voice (to me, anyway)

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brenda Shaughnessy has a great style and a strong voice. She knows how to use language. I admire her writing.

[sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I generally can’t stand the 80’s as a theme or genre, but that is more of a personal preference. Shaughnessey’s diction is from a distant galaxy.