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A review by cryo_guy
If I'm Scared We Can't Win by Sophie Collins, Emily Berry, Anne Carson
4.0
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.
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.