Discography [Hardcover]

Mr. Sean Singer (Author), Sean Singer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2002 | Series: Yale Series of Younger Poets (Book 96)

This year's winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Sean Singer's Discography. Playful, experimental, jazz-influenced, the poems in this book delight in sound and approach the more abstract pleasures of music. Singer takes as his subjects music, jazz figures, and historical events. Series judge W. S. Merwin praises Singer for his "roving demands on his language" and "the quick-changes of his invention in search of some provisional rightness."

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sean Singer was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, and grew up in Florida. He received his MFA from Washington University in 1999 and has won scholarships to Bread Loaf and the Catskills Poetry Workshop. He currently teaches English at New Jewish High School in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (November 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300093624
• ISBN-13: 978-0300093629
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,065,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sean Singer was born in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1974. His first book Discography won the 2001 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, selected by W.S. Merwin, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is also the recipient of an artist's grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a 2005 Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars something else, July 15, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Discography (Paperback)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Delightful First Book, April 6, 2005

By 

Amanda "Amanda" (New York, Us) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Discography (Hardcover)

The biographical nature of Sean Singer's "Discography" contains a delightful array of poems about musicians. As an unbelievable first book, "Discography" was selected winner of the "2001 Yale series of Younger Poets". Its jazz-centered poems are enjoyable to, not only jazz fans but, music fans as a whole. This being Singer's first book, it is not as advanced in style as those books written by poets such as Paul Muldoon or Robert Pinsky. Many first time poets have this same problem, but like a singer, a poet "has to grow into his voice"!

Sean Singer is one of few younger poets whose work is understandable and acceptable by just about anyone. Singer's poems tend to grasp the reader, keeping them on edge by not unveiling the direct meaning of the poem, letting the reader figure it out on their own. After reading Signer's poems in Discography several times, they tend to "shine brighter"! You grasp a greater meaning every time you read it, providing you with more understanding. Sean Singer's poems are very much enjoyable even if you don't fully comprehend. He even adds some unique styles in Discography such as the "chopping up" of sentences along the page in "The Old Record". Singer is only in his 20's and has only written one book, but one can only imagine how his talent will grow and what he will write in the future.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Words as Music, December 18, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Discography (Paperback)

Moving between himself in the third person and others in the first, Singer interpolates the line that wavers between degradation and redemption and is itself art. His poems are like fragments of jazz crystallized out of music and into language. The whole that emerges from these fragments is more than just a literary analog of jazz; it embraces the history and power of the movement to enact change, the ability of art to transform. This book succeeds at the impossible project of showing us ourselves as individuals while revealing the sameness that holds us together.