Discography

Rating:
Summary: The Poetry of Bullworth
Review: Discography is one of many recent books by younger poets which seems to find its soul and guiding lights in the work of current poet laureate Billy Collins, by which I mean that it seeks to take potentially volatile material and make it palatable for middle-brow readers. Like most of the books in the Yale Younger Poets Series (edited by WS Merwin), Singer's book seizes upon aspects of African American culture and/or history (in this case music) and promptly bowdlerizes them for white sensibilities. Singers' book is unique in this regard only because he attempts to lay on a thin veneer of postmodern gimmickry (i.e., elisions of language that really don't alter anything or typographically arranging a pedestrian poem to make it look--on the page anyway--"experimental". ) Like Bullworth, these poems want so badly to seem hip and edgy that they try to dress the part and end up making fools of themselves. Once you get past these poems' exteriors, you find yourself munching on the stale white bread of commonplace ideas and conciliatory sentimentalities.

Rating:
Summary: Good Debut
Review: I enjoyed this book's poems of an autobiographical nature and found the poems about musicians, although for the most part well-written, to be a little too conventional (though I can see why others might enjoy them). I'd caution those who would chastise a poet's first book for its weaknesses to remember that it's a first book and a poet sometimes needs time to grow into his voice. I think there's some strong promise still to be realized here. I do hope that the first review posted here is not, as the by-line indicates, actually by Sean Singer. I'd hate to think that a poet would be so desperate as to write a review of his own book and heap praises on himself!

Rating:
Summary: something else
Review: sean singer displays an astonishing energy and range in this collection, and (this is one of the signs of good art) the poems seem to improve with each rereading. a lot of the poems seem difficult at first, but the pleasure of reading them is always there, and sometimes -- i'm thinking of "Ellingtonia" and others -- the not-understanding almost adds to the pleasure, like listening to a song for the first time which you know is pretty damn good even though you can only understand a few of the words. but singer isn't being willfully obscure -- when you read them again, you start to see that he is sort of inventing a language of his own with each poem, which -- let's face it -- is what most great poets do. other poems, too, are just plain fun, like "The Old Record," the opening poem, wild and almost cummings-esque in the way the words spin around the page, but cummings never wrote anything quite like it either. others need no explanation, like "The Tiger Interior" or "But Beautiful".

anyway, reading this book excited me and excites me still. sean singer isn't even thirty, and he's already writing like this -- complicated, intelligent, with a voice he can call his own. imagine the future.