Lullaby for Sinners: Poems

by Kate Braverman

A brilliant book of poetry by a legendary American author.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Kate Braverman (born 1950) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet, originally from Los Angeles, California, who has garnered great acclaim for works including the novels Lithium for Medea (1979), Palm Latitudes (1988), Wonders of the West (1993), and The Incantation of Frida K (2001). Her most significant work has been in stylistic hybrid forms built upon poems and rendered as short stories. She has published two books of short stories, "Squandering the Blue" (1990) and "Small Craft Warnings" (1997). She has also published four books of poetry. She has won three Best American Short Stories awards, an O. Henry Award, Carver Short Story Award, as well as the Economist Prize and an Isherwood Fellowship. She was also the first recipient of Graywolf Press Creative Nonfiction Award for Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles: An Accidental Memoir, published February 2006.

Braverman has a BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and an MA in English from Sonoma State University. She was a founding member of the Venice Poetry Workshop, Professor of Creative Writing at CSULA, staff faculty of the UCLA Writer's Program and taught privately a workshop which included Janet Fitch, Cristina Garcia and Donald Rawley. She lived in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong, raw, slightly mad poetry. Her imagery of Los Angeles and surrounding areas is brilliant. Her suffering is right in your face. I don't ever know how to give stars to poetry because I am no expert but for sheer impact, for her ability to make me feel, I had to give this one 4 stars.

[W.B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very early book in Braverman's career arc...she really plumped it out at 110 pages, and to do so she even (unwisely) drew upon work she had published in college journals (obvious juvenilia) and as a result this ends up being a very uneven collection in terms of quality. Many of these earlier poems have many dead lines and beg pruning terribly...others just beg euthanasia. The attempt to be Sylvia Plath ruins numerous poems; she only succeeds at being a mediocre Plath epigonus. But there are a handful of truly strong poems which are worth reading and adding to some future Kate Braverman Reader. These include poems like "Two and One Half Years Ago," "The Last of the Line," and "For My Unborn Daughter." Maybe poetry was just a brief foray for this author who is now a celebrated novelist/short story writer.

[Meg Tuite · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW! REad this! Kate Braverman is pure brilliance! I am reading through all of her books! Powerful, explosive, magnetic, like being in the middle of the best concert of your life on hallucinogenics! Her language is unparalleled and mesmerizing! Just get a copy of any book of Braverman's and let go of anything else you had to do. You won't be able to walk away once you begin!

[Gregg Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

She makes language more beautiful than it is / the language in her hands transcends itself. It's like some sort of magic , reading her work . She's so darn good it leaves me counting the stars in the sky . Gregg Taylor Banter

[roe · Rating 1 out of 5]

There was nothing extraordinary about the language in this collection, no exciting images or interesting subject matter. Much of the content belongs on a Law and Order episode.

There were a few poems that I enjoyed. "Milk Run," "First Love," and "Fall Rain, Fall Wind and Leaf" had the better imagery of the collection. "Faircrest Avenue" took a while o get going but ended up getting there.

"For My Unborn Daughter" was probably the best, it's line "we were of the small dark rooms where fear and pneumonia grew between the candles" evokes so much more than that image.

[Malcolm Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

I prefer her fiction to these poems, though I would like to sample something more current than these poems from 1980.

[Lydia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of her later work, of which I am a big fan, is stronger.