So Much Synth

Brenda Shaughnessy

Subversions of idiom and cliché punctuate Shaughnessy’s fourth collection, which revisits the romances, isolation, and music of adolescence. Brave and ferocious, So Much Synth is composed of equal parts femininity, pain, pleasure, critique, and synthesizer. Shaughnessy tenderly winces at her youthful excesses, nurturing humility, while documenting one woman’s evolution toward mature life as lover, mother, and intellect. With So Much Synth, Brenda Shaughnessy has arrived as a major voice in American literature.

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ISBN: 9781556595226

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9781556594878

Format: Hardcover

About the Author

Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan and grew up in Southern California. She is the author of Our Andromeda (Copper Canyon Press, 2012); Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Interior with Sudden Joy (FSG, 1999). Shaughnessy’s poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Harper’s, The Nation, The Rumpus, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. She is an assistant professor …

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Reviews

“Shaughnessy’s particular genius… is utterly poetic, but essayistic in scope.” —Hilton Als, New Yorker

“Shaughnessy’s voice is smart, sexy, self-aware, hip… consistently wry, and ever-savvy.” —Mary Jo Bang, Harvard Review

“The resonance of Shaughnessy’s poems is that of someone speaking out of an ecstasy and into an ecstasy, momentarily pausing to let us in on the fun, the pain.” —Richard Howard, Boston Review