If I'm Scared We Can't Win

Penguin Modern Poets #1

by Emily Berry, Anne Carson, Sophie Collins

The Penguin Modern Poets are succinct guides to the richness and diversity of contemporary poetry. Every volume brings together representative selections from the work of three poets now writing, allowing the curious reader and the seasoned lover of poetry to encounter the most exciting voices of our moment.". . . And I was grown up, with your face on,heating spice after spice to smoke out the smell of books, to burnthe taste buds off this bitten tongue, avoid ever speaking of you."- Emily Berry, 'Her Inheritance'"If you are not the free person you want to be you must find a place to tell the truth about that. To tell how things go for you."- Anne Carson, 'Candor'"I had a moment thereamong the balustradesand once that moment had expiredit graduatedfrom a moment to a life"- Sophie Collins, 'Dear No. 24601'

Genres: Poetry, 21st Century, Read For School, Anthologies, Nonfiction

114 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 28, 2016

About the author

Emily Berry is a poet, writer and editor. She grew up in London and studied English Literature at Leeds University and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College. Her debut poetry collection Dear Boy won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Hawthornden Prize. She is a contributor to The Breakfast Bible, a compendium of breakfasts, and is currently working towards a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia.

Reviews

[Pau · Rating 4 out of 5]

not sure if it deserves 4 stars for the overall book but for sentimental reasons because oh my GOD this was such a perfect selection of Emily Berry poems - I'm now obsessed with her. and Anne Carson was really something as always. I was quite indifferent to Sophie Collins though, only "Healers" really stood out for me

[Marta Ricart · Rating 2 out of 5]

i really enjoyed most poems by emily berry, especially letter to husband, our love could spoil dinner or her inheritance. i would like to read more from her but this is all i can say about this book. i didn’t enjoy or connect to anne carson and sophie collins’s works, i felt too uncultured to understand the references they were making or to find a deeper meaning in their words, so it became hard to finish the book. still, i think this collection by penguin is a v good way to discover new current day poets that might be a little more difficult to encounter, plus you get to read from three different ones in each volume.

[Emelie Talledo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m afraid Anglo poetry isn’t for me.

[Liselot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ik was zeker niet overtuigd van alles, en ik ben ook nog een wat onzekere poëzie lezer. Maar er zaten gedichten tussen waar ik wel echt heel erg van heb genoten

[Charlotte D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of poetry by some new (to me, at least) voices of women writing right now in the English language. Highlights for me were Emily Berry's 'Some Fears' and 'The Numbers Game' among others. Highly recommended.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this series is incredible and a good way to find new contemporary poets.
I've wanted to read some Emily Berry for ages so it was great to finally have a sample of her work. My favourite poems were by Sophie Collins; I love the comments on pop culture and literature as a response to a wider issue. They were really clever and witty.

[Laura]

I still marvel at how deeply poets engage with the world, how carefully they observe it.

[Rachel P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five stars for Emily Berry, a new discovery whose work I will absolutely be buying. Phrases of hers have haunted me for weeks: "Stop. Language is crawling all over me." "Speech is a dark stain spreading." Filled with gorgeous and evocative imagery, yet also at times plain with a very modern, conversational kind of anxiety.

Anne Carson I was already a little familiar with--I found her stuff a very mixed bag. Some of it was a wonderful mix of beauty and cleverness. Standouts for me were "Short Talk on the Mona Lisa" ("women are strong. She knew vessels, she knew water, she knew mortal thirst.") and "By Chance the Cycladic People." Other pieces just failed to land entirely. Sophie Collins, too, was a mixed bag. Some of her stuff I found completely obscure, not in an Anne Carson sort of way where I felt I was missing a reference, but where I just plain didn't know what she was talking about, either on an intellectual level or on that sort of instinctive, affective level that so much good poetry functions on. There were a few poems that I quite enjoyed--"Healers," "A Course in Miracles," "Donegal," and "Bunnies"--and the rest I think are probably worth the second chance of a reread, but largely I didn't really connect, and her work lacked the flashes of beauty that I found in the other two poets.
Still, overall a great collection to which I know I'll be returning.

[Graham · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think it is important to support contemporary poetry and poets, so I applaud Penguin for reviving their Modern Poets series. I do not regret buying and reading this, but I have to say also that I was quite disappointed. Emily Berry was the best of the three, I thought, and I did like several of her poems, even though they were quite allusive and obscure, and difficult to understand. But you could sense that there was a meaning or a story behind the poems, and some of the images or lines were distinctly quotable. I liked The Numbers Game best, I think, and also Bad New Government.
Sophie Collins I found harder, more difficult to grasp, and often I did not know what she was writing about. There were many religious references which I found surprising, and which puzzled me and distanced her from me.
Anne Carson I frankly could not make head nor tail of, and I did not find any of her poems were interestingly or strikingly worded.
Many of the poems go beyond 'free verse' into what looks and sounds very like prose. They do raise the interesting question of what makes them 'poems', if indeed they are such.

[Giovy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book with my whole heart, i have annotated it and ruined it in all the beautiful ways a thoroughly read, well-loved book is. I admit i bought it due to my near-obsession with Anne Carson's writing, and was pleasantly surprised. I really liked Emily Berry and Sophie Collins poems. I am still on the hunt for the rest of the books in this series, due to how much I really genuinely liked it.
Honestly, for my this was the perfect and best book I've ever taken with me while traveling. It's small, and being on a train or boat or plane and just watching the world go by you while you read the poems in this book and slowly sink deeper into introspection and feelings about your life. It made me melancholic and nostalgic, which is my favorite mood to be in when traveling. I really do recommend this books if you want to get into some modern female poets, and if you have melancholic tendencies. Big fan.

[Aquarius Posterboy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fucking loved this collection. Love the concept and all poems were fantastic. I have re-read them over and over until it etched in my brain. The whole book is littered with my scribbles, notes and underlined passages and it's sibblings will be giftied in quantities.

[bianca · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars
I can't say there was any poem in here that particularly stood out to me. I'm not too impressed, to be honest... Emily Berry was probably the best out of the three in my opinion

[Anders · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I picked this up cuz I saw something by Emily Berry and thought it was cool and found this collection which included Anne Carson, one of my favorites, so I said Sophie Collins must be cool, too, let's give it a try. Also the title was very tempting. I wasn't disappointed much at all.

I'll go by the order of the book.

Berry: Very interesting. She has some great turns of phrases that I really loved "watching the sea is like watching something in pieces continually striving to be whole" "I hard do you have to work to try to understand something before you give up?" "I have cried your name in every possible colour." Other times her poems fell flat and I wasn't sure where she was going. It wasn't that they were inscrutable, I think I just need to know more about her or read more of her poems. "Trees" was my favorite. The cool thing about Berry is the acknowledgment of insecurity and emotional turmoil combined with her prose style. I'd definitely read more of her poetry.

Carson: Great as always. Many of the excerpts were from larger works that I've read but don't make as much sense out of context. I hadn't read The Beauty of the Husband, but it seems sort of interesting? Still kinda iffy on that one. I really enjoyed Candor, which is another I hadn't read at all, a poem made for Roni Horn out of the titles of five of her sculptures.
Here is Could 1:
"If you are not the free person you want to be you must find a place to tell the truth about that. To tell how things go for you. Candor is like a skein being produced inside the belly day after day, it has to get itself woven out somewhere. You could whisper down a well. You could write a letter and keep it in a drawer. You could inscribe a curse on a ribbon of lead and bury it in the ground to lie unread for thousands of years. The point is not to find a reader, the point is the telling itself. Consider a person standing alone in a room. The house is silent. She is looking down at a piece of paper. Nothing else exists. All her veins go down into this paper. She takes her pen and writes on it some marks no one else will ever see, she bestows on it a kind of surplus, she tops it off with a gesture as private and accurate as her own name."
Wasn't crazy about "If By Chance the Cycladic People" which I had seen before, but the Ibykos translated 6 ways was clever and funny. Candor was definitely my fav.

Collins: More cerebral and less emotive than Berry. Also a little wider in purview. "Dear No. 24601" and "A Course in Miracles" were pretty good. "Bunny" was my favorite.

"The future is an eye that I don't dare look into"
"These are facts. The difference between us
is the difference between facts
and lies. You tell lies. Not only do you lie
about the dust, but you lie about
or altogether conceal your reasons
for having fabricated such a complaint. Any reason
I can conceive of that might have prompted you
to fabricate such a complaint is unrelated
and in any case, is of your own doing.
Have you considered the impact of your complaint
on the ones you love?"

"The dust appears if anything, to be synonymous with your own sense of guilt, and if that's true, then all is dust, these words, Bunny."

Parting words: A nice selection of 3 good and different female poets. Pick it up if you want a taste of that, but British (Carson is Canadian). Or I guess Collins is Dutch originally but lives in Scotland? Whatever. The title comes from one of the Berry poems. Ironically the line after is "But I am scared." I was originally really attracted to the title, but the poems didn't actually have much of that sentiment although I will say it wasn't exactly absent either. I think all three poets play both sides of the doubt and certainty fence. Appropriate really. As much as that conditional sets it up, the truth is that you can be scared and win, because no one ever completely works through their fears. Okay maybe they do but their insecurities in a more general sense-no one lacks insecurities. The power of the sentiment isn't to say if you're scared then you lose, it's to encourage you to not be scared so that you keep trying to win. Fear is something I believe you have to continually work through and you can win while working through it, as you diminish it in various ways. The point is that you keep trying. Anyway that wasn't that much of a theme in the collection which made me sad, but I understand it was three poets and a grab bag of their poetry.

[sauvageloup · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was...okay. admittedly i'm not a huge poetry reader and I wouldn't have read this if it hadn't have been a uni books.

pros:
- I really liked Emily Berry's poems, especially Letter to husband, Trees, Picnic and The Numbers game. I found she used some really lovely phrases and packed a lot of emotion into her work.
- I also liked Carson's 'Candour' and Collin's 'Healers' and 'An Unusual day'.
- it succeeded in making me interested in seeking out more of Berry's work
- some of them were quite humorous

cons:
- didn't really click with the Arlene poems of Berry's
- I felt like form frequently took over clarity and content and emotional impact was lost because I simply didn't understand what was going on. this isn't necessary always terrible, for example I didn't really "get" Berry's 'Picnic' poem but it sounded so lovely I liked it anyway. but Carson and Collins just sounded, to my uneducated ear, like prose nonsense split up across lines. I could pick out a few phases I liked but that was all.

so overall I liked Berry's work but would pass up reading anymore Carson or Collins for sure.

[Yifei Men · Rating 3 out of 5]

An anthology of poems from 3 modern female poets.

Was already familiar with Carson's works, but Berry and Collins were new to me. I like Carson's work a lot, but found them a little jarring when taken out of context (from longer collection and works) and anthologized here... This primer just doesn't allow the space and time that Carson's works demand.

Was pleasantly taken with Collin's poems, especially the short prose poems like little story snippets, oftentimes blending the fantabulous with the quotidian; the darkly satirical with the blandly narrative. Personal favorite is Zyzio and the negative spaces it creates and respects -- all those that failed to happen becomes a sensitivity towards our realities.

Liked Berry's poems with deep refrains (letter to husband and some fears are good examples), but couldn't really get the sequence involving Arlene.

Overall an enjoyable book and a quick read, but really I think this serves as an introduction to the there voices presented in this book, not necessarily a good survey or representation.

Read on e-book via Libby.

[Conor Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three poets; three different reactions. I enjoyed the work of Emily Berry. She is by far the funniest and the wittiest of the three as evidenced best in the hilarious "Our Love Could Spoil Dinner". There is a nice line in "Letter to Husband" where "A scribble is the way a heartbeat is told.." There are many heartbeats in these poems elevated beyond a scribble into something more poetic. My favourite poems are "Dear Boy" and "The Tomato Salad".
I have never been able to "get" the poetry of Anne Carson. I can see, at times, what she is attempting to do. But the ambition is more exacting than the execution. Even her celebrated translations of Sappho, not included here, lag, in my view, a long way behind those of Mary Barnard and Aaron Poochigian.
Sophie Collins works best in small doses, the shorter the poems the better they are. The shortest "Arduous" is, for me, the best.

[Carli Green · Rating 2 out of 5]

Emily Berry's poems read like puzzles... I didn't like that. They were too hard to penetrate for me but had some wonderful turns of phrases. Anne Carson's were the most interesting to me. There was something about the way she uses characters from history and ones of her own creation as a through-line for this collection. Sophie Collins' were forgettable.

That said... this book has made me question whether or not I know 'how' to read poetry. I'll update you a few more poetry books down the line.

[Luana · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I enjoyed reading this collection, most of the poems were not my cup of tea and didn't really connect with any of them. However I really enjoyed Emily Berry's collection.

[Oscar Cremmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

as you were LG x

[Carla Roda · Rating 1 out of 5]

***1,5 stars***

[Munira · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot! I enjoyed the Sophie Collins section but the Emily Berry poems were my favourite

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

LOVED emily berry’s poems. can’t wait to read more of her work

[Ruari Paterson-Achenbach · Rating 4 out of 5]

all really stunning in their own way

[Anuja · Rating 3 out of 5]

[2.5]

[Swarnendu Ghosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked Emily Berry. All the poems she wrote touched me. Other two I just didn’t like. Interview with Hara Takimi is the only poem by Anne Carson is good. For Sophie Collins I couldn’t find any.

[Diana]

“Esme says if I’m scared we can’t win. But I am scared.” (19)

[Joanna Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

really enjoyed the emily berry, other two were mixed, I hate hATE HATE any mentions of greek / roman mythology so ms carson lost me there

[Eleanor Murray · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really love the premise of this collection but I couldn’t connect with a single piece.

[Inés Wotton · Rating 3 out of 5]

probably a 3.5 really
some good bits
some not

[cara · Rating 4 out of 5]

this collection has been on my shelves for long enough that I don’t remember where I got it from but i’m so happy I picked it up as it was my introduction to emily berry