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Ugly Music
Diannely Antigua’s debut collection Ugly Music is a cacophonous symphony of reality, dream, trauma, and obsession. It reaches into the corners of love and loss where survival and surrender are blurred. The poems span a traumatic early childhood, a religious adolescence, and later a womanhood that grapples with learning how to create an identity informed by, yet in spite of, those challenges. What follows is an exquisitely vulgar voice, unafraid to draw attention to the distasteful, to speak a truth created by a collage of song and confession, diary and praise. It is an account of observation and dissociation, the danger of simultaneously being inside and outside the experiences that mold a life. Ugly Music emerges as a story of witness, a realization that even the strangest things exist on earth and deserve to live.
- GenresPoetry
99 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
November 14, 2021
An absolute must read in contemporary poetry. Here is an example of a form known as a Golden Shovel:
Golden Shovel with Solstice
by Diannely Antigua
after Gwendolyn Brooks and Terrance Hayes
When we found her sex positions book, we
didn't think it was real.
My mother wasn't cool
enough for sex. We
flipped through the pages, turning left,
studying where each body fit in this school,
the detailed figures of the man and woman, the parts we
hid under cotton, kept from the lurk-
ing skin, a hand, a finger, the late-
night moon with its borrowed light. We
lay our bodies on the bed, to strike
the pose, mimic the face down, the ass out straight.
We laughed and snorted, we
looked like pigs, sing-
ing oinks, our faces in the trough, this sin.
I don't want to say what we did next, that we
touched our own bodies, thin
arms reaching to what bits of hair we'd grown, the begin-
ing of a secret thing, or that we
reached for each other, a fumbled jazz
of grips, on this solstice in June.
If today, I could replay our hands' song, we
would deny its music, when we each die-
d a little on that bed, notes ending too soon.
Golden Shovel with Solstice
by Diannely Antigua
after Gwendolyn Brooks and Terrance Hayes
When we found her sex positions book, we
didn't think it was real.
My mother wasn't cool
enough for sex. We
flipped through the pages, turning left,
studying where each body fit in this school,
the detailed figures of the man and woman, the parts we
hid under cotton, kept from the lurk-
ing skin, a hand, a finger, the late-
night moon with its borrowed light. We
lay our bodies on the bed, to strike
the pose, mimic the face down, the ass out straight.
We laughed and snorted, we
looked like pigs, sing-
ing oinks, our faces in the trough, this sin.
I don't want to say what we did next, that we
touched our own bodies, thin
arms reaching to what bits of hair we'd grown, the begin-
ing of a secret thing, or that we
reached for each other, a fumbled jazz
of grips, on this solstice in June.
If today, I could replay our hands' song, we
would deny its music, when we each die-
d a little on that bed, notes ending too soon.
May 24, 2019
In Ugly Music, Diannely Antigua strips away the ugly parts of what it means to be human, examining each with a precise eye and uncanny lyricism. Girlhood and womanhood are reduced to their beautiful and vulgar particulars. Faith meets heresy as erotic, romantic, and familial love thread through the book. Antigua takes the aspects of femininity women and girls are often punished for and polishes them until they sing.
January 28, 2020
I am a 67 year old Caucasian Midwestern male. My perspective on this book of poems is that of a guest unsure of an invitation. Ugly Music is poetry of a high order. Craft, inventiveness, discipline, daring, specificity, umbrage, lyricism abound from an underground that by rights ought to rule our attention. “I peel the corners lapkin after lapkin, and dear God, it’s the holiest thought I’ve had today.”
July 29, 2019
Beautiful, aching collection of family, memory, faith, desire wrought with violence, sadness, sweet honesty. Antigua’s approach is stereophonic, strung with little lights of hope and love. Her voice is clear, singular, versed and chorused. Her poems are a gift, honey-golden and wishing to be tasted.
April 15, 2019
I was getting more stressed with every poem I read because I knew I was getting closer to the end, and that’s not where I ever wanted to be.
August 13, 2019
I love this book! See my review of it at Muzzle Magazine: https://www.muzzlemagazine.com/review...
April 8, 2023
Judging by the other reviews and ratings, I’m likely to be sorely outnumbered when it comes to my thoughts on this book.
I’m rarely one to not finish a book, even if it makes me uncomfortable or I’m just not “jiving” with it. That said, I did consider leaving this book as a DNF.
(I hadn’t known much about the book prior to reading it, except for seeing that it touched on subjects such as trauma and grief—both of which are topics that interest me and I love to see how poets play with both of those and put words to unnameable hurt—so I thought I’d pick it up from the library and give it a read.)
Sure, there are lines I can pick out—to say I like them, to say they’re strong. BUT. The majority of the time I was reading this book, I felt frustrated and even bored! Nearly the entire book is about sex and, for me, it was too much.
Antigua’s trauma is real and I do not, at all, attempt to imply otherwise.
It wasn’t long, though, before finding myself wanting her to write about something else—anything else—and when I found a seemingly unrelated poem, felt hopeful (about the change of topic) upon starting it, it often came right back to talking about sex in a really gross, invasive way. Sometimes a mountain is just a mountain (or steak is just steak, or music is just music…); it doesn’t need to be some greater allusion to sex.
I did find it a bit humorous that almost halfway through the book the poem “Suggested Sad Songs for Broken Hearts,” begins with the line “I need to teach myself / that not everything is about sex.” I read this quote, feeling like this was the thought in my head the entire time I was reading this book and yet… nothing changes from Antigua realizing / saying this. This insight produces no growth, no difference, in the poems that come in the latter part of the book.
As a total aside, the art on the front cover is truly STUNNING. Props to the artist, Angela Singer, for creating such a masterpiece!!
I’m rarely one to not finish a book, even if it makes me uncomfortable or I’m just not “jiving” with it. That said, I did consider leaving this book as a DNF.
(I hadn’t known much about the book prior to reading it, except for seeing that it touched on subjects such as trauma and grief—both of which are topics that interest me and I love to see how poets play with both of those and put words to unnameable hurt—so I thought I’d pick it up from the library and give it a read.)
Sure, there are lines I can pick out—to say I like them, to say they’re strong. BUT. The majority of the time I was reading this book, I felt frustrated and even bored! Nearly the entire book is about sex and, for me, it was too much.
Antigua’s trauma is real and I do not, at all, attempt to imply otherwise.
It wasn’t long, though, before finding myself wanting her to write about something else—anything else—and when I found a seemingly unrelated poem, felt hopeful (about the change of topic) upon starting it, it often came right back to talking about sex in a really gross, invasive way. Sometimes a mountain is just a mountain (or steak is just steak, or music is just music…); it doesn’t need to be some greater allusion to sex.
I did find it a bit humorous that almost halfway through the book the poem “Suggested Sad Songs for Broken Hearts,” begins with the line “I need to teach myself / that not everything is about sex.” I read this quote, feeling like this was the thought in my head the entire time I was reading this book and yet… nothing changes from Antigua realizing / saying this. This insight produces no growth, no difference, in the poems that come in the latter part of the book.
As a total aside, the art on the front cover is truly STUNNING. Props to the artist, Angela Singer, for creating such a masterpiece!!
November 15, 2019
These poems are beautiful, rebellious pieces of art. There is a wildness to this collection—a woman negotiating memories of abuse, miscarriage, sex, religion and identity with honesty and grace. Ugly Music is written in seven parts—verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, outro. The sequencing is perfect and I was struck by the careful arrangement of stanza breaks and spacing, especially in “Some Notes on Love.” I cannot recommend this collection enough. I read it, I cried, then I read it again. Out loud.
January 16, 2020
Certainly visceral and gripping, with special attention paid to the more grotesque aspects of femininity, this collection of poetry follows the narrator along an increasingly troubled life full of faith, family, depression, and sex. That being said, the format was at times confusing and difficult to piece together — the lack of chronology made the narrator’s motives and emotions hard to string together. However, it was in all a fascinating study both of what it means to be a woman in the modern world and what it means to feel without control over one’s own life.
May 6, 2024
Antigua's collection tugs at your gut, asking you to re-evaluate the way you think about language, sex, and prayer. A powerful reading experience.
"you’re just another
locust in a swarm of
other locusts you’re Pharoah or Moses
in one bed dreaming of basket
babies praying to God
you weren’t the firstborn"
"you’re just another
locust in a swarm of
other locusts you’re Pharoah or Moses
in one bed dreaming of basket
babies praying to God
you weren’t the firstborn"
October 9, 2022
This book is erotic and comedic, brimming with so much (love, hate, potential, all the et ceteras). I didn’t anticipate the feelings this book would stir within me. Each poem starts you off so strong, with an end that is just as potent and lingering. You are a force, Antigua.
February 8, 2025
this book reads like a book my friend mia would love. It has a lot of vivid and precise imagery and sometimes very sharp and in your face but so beautiful at the same time. It felt deeply honest despite being pretty surreal. im trying to break it down for a presentation next week and its tricky
December 30, 2021
REVIEW FORTHCOMING
January 14, 2022
A novel in poems. So much to love in this collection, brutal and brave and dear.
July 3, 2022
Poetry that is raw, that breaks you. I'm never giving up my copy of this book. Ever.
December 31, 2023
When I'm at the edge,
I fall in to stay balanced.
I fall in to stay balanced.
June 22, 2024
The Diary Entries felt like reading in the language of the brain at its most effusive and free-flowing state (the language of dreams, traumatic memory, and the creative mind).
August 6, 2024
Tedious.
October 8, 2019
Religion, sex, abuse, mental illness, suicide attempts, praise for the impure, and a fierce drive to make it all sing drive Diannely Antigua’s crackling debut, Ugly Music. In her insight-filled interview with Adroit, Antigua says “My book really should have a disclaimer or a trigger warning” (and perhaps it should), but more jolting than the subject matter is the liminal space in which she holds the reader, somewhere between wanting and not, between desire and devastation.
Sex, in its sugar and spoil, is at the heart of Ugly Music. “Suggested Sad Songs for Broken Hearts” opens with the speaker’s central conflict: “I need to teach myself / that not everything is about sex. / But I am at this desk to make money / so I can pay my rent, so I can afford / a room to have sex in.” The poem wryly pokes fun at the speaker, but even her focused desire cannot remain uncomplicated, and by the end she is “pushing sex / headfirst out a tiny window.” Though sex is largely sought after and celebrated in this collection—deliciously so in poems like “When Booty Call Turns into Love”—reasons for wanting its defenestration also emerge.
In “Picked,” sex is stained by childhood abuse—“Maybe he touched me to reruns // of The Brady Bunch, how I never trusted the father / in a room with them, girls, especially.” In “Diary Entry #4: Atonement,” Jesus becomes a groomer—sitting at the “computer chair,” about to “graduate this year” and the young speaker notes “He’s not / a virgin.”
complete review here: https://rhinopoetry.org/reviews/ugly-...
Sex, in its sugar and spoil, is at the heart of Ugly Music. “Suggested Sad Songs for Broken Hearts” opens with the speaker’s central conflict: “I need to teach myself / that not everything is about sex. / But I am at this desk to make money / so I can pay my rent, so I can afford / a room to have sex in.” The poem wryly pokes fun at the speaker, but even her focused desire cannot remain uncomplicated, and by the end she is “pushing sex / headfirst out a tiny window.” Though sex is largely sought after and celebrated in this collection—deliciously so in poems like “When Booty Call Turns into Love”—reasons for wanting its defenestration also emerge.
In “Picked,” sex is stained by childhood abuse—“Maybe he touched me to reruns // of The Brady Bunch, how I never trusted the father / in a room with them, girls, especially.” In “Diary Entry #4: Atonement,” Jesus becomes a groomer—sitting at the “computer chair,” about to “graduate this year” and the young speaker notes “He’s not / a virgin.”
complete review here: https://rhinopoetry.org/reviews/ugly-...
September 7, 2023
A collection of poems about survival, sexuality, identity, loss, desire, and the body.
from Re-Education: "There is a truth in this magic— / the tie I took Plan B, then / the other time I took Plan B. I bled / for two months. There could've been / a mother in me."
from Post-Concussion: "But I cried anyway / and wondered who'd saved us, / if we'd been saved at all, / if somewhere we were burning blue and orange, the peaks / of fire like crayon leaf rubbings, the paper, / the veins, or some celestial child / discovering flame, magnifying glass held high above, / smoke rising from our hearts."
from When I Try to Explain: "you / sat in a hospital bed throwing up charcoal // because you took too much of something / with your name on it. Sometimes you grow // allergic to the morning and how it greets you / with painful welcome, a smile from // a lover who'd found someone new."
from Re-Education: "There is a truth in this magic— / the tie I took Plan B, then / the other time I took Plan B. I bled / for two months. There could've been / a mother in me."
from Post-Concussion: "But I cried anyway / and wondered who'd saved us, / if we'd been saved at all, / if somewhere we were burning blue and orange, the peaks / of fire like crayon leaf rubbings, the paper, / the veins, or some celestial child / discovering flame, magnifying glass held high above, / smoke rising from our hearts."
from When I Try to Explain: "you / sat in a hospital bed throwing up charcoal // because you took too much of something / with your name on it. Sometimes you grow // allergic to the morning and how it greets you / with painful welcome, a smile from // a lover who'd found someone new."
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews