Brawl & Jag

by April Bernard

In Brawl & Jag, her most personal and accessible collection to date, with poems that are by turns playful, sorrowful, and sharp-edged, April Bernard explores subjects ranging from childhood anger to adult grief, from a museum of skulls to the Western movie genre to “the experiment / some amateurs mixed / of white fizzing democracy / with smoky purple capitalism.” Also included are poems that channel the voices of the sixteenth-century queen “Bloody Mary,” a girl living in tsarist Siberia, filmmaker Werner Herzog, and a comically odd (and invented) twentieth-century Italian poet.


From “Anger”:


I always lie when I always say

I didn’t know the gun was loaded.

Genres: Poetry

71 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 28, 2016

About the author

April Bernard is the author of three poetry collections and a novel. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the Boston Review, the New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. She lives in Bennington, Vermont.

Reviews

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

In April Bernard's fifth collection, the poems tend to be intimate and direct, but it suffers from perhaps starting off on its best poem, "Anger," which hits with a one-two punch. Bernard's diction is often startling but generally direct and colloquial in syntax and rhythm, although she does not veer into the prosaic. Bernard's shifting between persona poems and personal lyrics do really help give variety to the poem: the topics move around from Herzog in the jungle to the unlucky and bitter sixteenth-century English queen to brutal winter in old Russia. Bernard has a gift for texture and color in this collection which helps the personal lyrics, particularly in the second section of the book, feel inhabited and less abstract. Not a perfect collection, but a solid one.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Prithee, what route did you take to get here,
my fussbudget, my fresh raspberry?"

Wow I LOVE these. What a lively, fresh collection. There were some poems that didn't connect with me, but for the most part they're all so filled with energy, so playful, so musical — just a delight to read, and narratively so satisfying in their emotionality. I enjoyed "Wheeling", "When I Was Thirteen, I Saw Uncle Vanya", and "'Tis Late" in particular.

4.5/5

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I confess some bias since the poet is a mentor and dear friend, but this is by any measure a thrilling and masterful book. Haunting, hilarious, and surprising, the poems embody and enliven moments of loss, anger, joy, and rapture. Many of them feel like ars poetica, works that show us how and why the writing and reading of poems matters, whether their subject is a homeless woman in NYC, a Chekhov play, or the night sky.

[Nova Papasodora · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This collection has a wonderful usage of word play and reads in a gritty manner that I liked, but I didn't feel like there was much to the poetry overall. I often felt like there was no feeling or meaning behind any of the poems and they simply didn't speak to me. That being said there were a few that I really liked: Anger, Comet, Not From the Italian, and Trying to Like Spenser. For the most part I thought that the poetry was well written and most of the poems had a natural flow and actual grammar.

Overall, not one of my favorite collections, but definitely not one that I would discount either.

[honeybean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts off strong but seemed to lose connection by the end of the book

[Leonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

A variety of poems by a poet, new to me, but worthwhile reading.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Here
even the stars in the sky
look like a mess."

[Carisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars, rounded up. Favorites: Blossom; Then It Changed; Not From The Italian ch 7: Rome.

[Tab · Rating 3 out of 5]

i keep forgetting you can log poetry books. i am sitting in the library by myself again i love ‘anger’ and i love ‘found sonnet: samuel johnson’ and i am still reading

[Brownguy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poems too deep for me; it was like reading a stranger's secret thoughts without having any kind of connection.