Human Dark with Sugar
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Winner of the 2007 James Laughlin Award as the best second book published in the United States.The New York Times - David KirbyBrenda Shaughnessy's poems bristle with imperatives: confuse me, spoon-feed me, stop the madness, decide. There are more direct orders in her first few pages than in six weeks of boot camp. Only Shaughnessy's kidding. Or she is and she isn't. If you just want to boss people around, you're a control freak, but if you can joke about it, then your bossiness is leavened by a yeast that's all too infrequent in contemporary poetry, that of humor. A wisecrack here and there can give life to a deadly serious agenda; a little wit adds dimension to a topic limited by its own darkness. And there isn't a single poem in Human Dark With Sugar that isn't funny…As I read Shaughnessy's poems, I can't help hearing not only her poetic ancestors but Abbott and Costello as well: not the film bumblers being chased by Frankenstein but the double-talkers whose "Who's on First?" routine is often imitated, never duplicated. People are funny. Words are funnier. And poems, when they're at their smartest and best-made, are funniest of all.
AnodyneI'm Over the Moon 5Magic Turns to Math and Back 7Why Is the Color of Snow? 9Parthenogenesis 11Life as Selected Solids 13Old Bed 15Spring in Space: A Lecture 17Three Summers Mark Only Two Years 20One Love Story, Eight Takes 21AmbrosiaI'm Perfect at Feelings 27Breasted Landscape 29Sorry, T. 31Drift 33Three Sorries 34Replaceable until You're Not 37You Too, Not Just Me 42Straight's the New Gay 44Vagile 45This Loved Body 47Me in Paradise 53AstrolabeEmbarrassment 57A Poet's Poem 61First Date and Still Very, Very Lonely 62No Such Thing as One Bee 64Moth Death on the Windowsill 66Don't Be So Small, Poet 68Dancing in My Room Alone 71Fathometer 73Magician 75A Brown Age 76
