Sister: A Novel in Poems

by Nickole Brown

This new edition of Nickole Brown's debut—published ten years after it first appeared—holds just as much relevancy and power today as it did a decade ago. In this special revised edition are all of the poems that first came to light in 2007, along with a discussion with the author and craft guide geared towards survivors writing through their own trauma.

Nickole Brown writes in a voice that is simultaneously vernacular and lyrical. It is a voice thick with the humidity and whirring cicadas of Kentucky, but the poems are dangerous, smelling of the crisp cucumber scent of a copperhead about to strike. Epistolary in nature, and with a novel's arc, Sister is a story that begins with a teen giving birth to a baby girl—the narrator—during a tornado, and in some ways, that tornado never ends.

In the hands of a lesser poet, this debut collection would be a standard-issue confession, a melodramatic exercise in anger and self-pity. But melodrama requires simple villains and victims, and there is neither in this richly complex portrait. Ultimately, Sister is more about the narrator's transgressions and failures, more about her relationships to her sister and their mother than about that which divided them. With equal parts sass and sorrow, these poems etch out survival won not with tender-hearted reflections but by smoking cigarettes through fly-specked screens, by using cans of aerosol hair spray as makeshift flamethrowers, and, most cruelly, by leaving home and trying to forget her sister entirely. From there, each poem is a letter of explanation and apology to that younger sister she never knew.

Sister recounts a return to a place that Brown never truly left. It is a book of forgiveness, of seeking what is beyond mere survival, of finding your way out of a place of poverty and abuse only to realize that you must go back again, all the way back to where everything began—that warm, dark nest of mother.

Genres: Poetry

136 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

Nickole Brown received her MFA from the Vermont College, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She worked at Sarabande Books for ten years. Her first collection, Sister, a novel-in-poems, was first published in 2007 by Red Hen Press and a new edition was reissued by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2018. Her second book, a biography-in-poems called Fanny Says, came out from BOA Editions in 2015 and won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. The audio book of that collection came out in 2017. Her poems have, among other places, appeared in The New York Times, The Oxford American, Poetry International, Gulf Coast, and The Best American Poetry 2017. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the Kentucky Arts Council. She was an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for four years until she gave up her beloved time in the classroom in hope of writing full time. Currently, she is the Editor for the Marie Alexander Poetry Series and teaches periodically at a number of places, including the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program, the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNCA, Poets House, the Poetry Center at Smith College, the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and the Hindman Settlement School. She lives with her wife, poet Jessica Jacobs, in Asheville, North Carolina, where she volunteers at four different animal sanctuaries. She’s at work on a bestiary of sorts about these animals, and a chapbook of those poems called To Those Who Were Our First Gods recently won the 2018 Rattle Chapbook Prize.

Reviews

[India · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the poetry in this book, even though a lot of it gave me chills or made my heart ache. I didn't grow up with that much distance - in age or emotionally - from my sisters, but I did grow up with complex and different relationships with all three of them as the "angry, rebellious, impatient for change oldest sister" and related to a lot of the feelings in this book.

[Laure-anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is THE best first book for 2008. Poignant, fluid, moving, tender, raw, compelling and with a voice so powerful, yet so fragile at times that it makes you shiver. Each poem is part of a heart-wrenching "novel in verse", although each poem can be read separately and does hold its own heart and intensity. Buy this book -- you won't regret it!

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my relationship to poetry in its first issue. Now, reissued with a new cover, it still wrecks me and saves me. Again and again.

[Ruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

If we could all speak our emotions as nakedly, with the complexity that Nickole Brown does, I believe the aggregate compassion in the world would instantly double. Do yourself a favor and read Sister.

The poems that make up this novel in verse have the intelligence and artistry to stand alone--each and every one of them--yet together they are an indivisible whole.

Brown creates a world that is enlivened by her recurrent imagery, such as the fetus, urine, insects, crayons, shoes, chipped items, and painted nails. Everything is as concrete as the keyboard in front of me, as accessible as water. But beneath the surface is a heartbreaking emotional landscape, a netherworld of the soul.

Setting what is broken alongside what has been mended, Brown's work tells us of a life in progress: of relationships broken, of regrets, apologies, and the hope reflected in a shiny red high heel.

[Elizabeth]

It’s almost too intimate.... talk about the tradition of “tell it straight” writing from the feminist press! This is a book of apology and accounting. Brown tells of her stepfather’s incest by way of apologizing to her sister (born to him and her mother many years later).

What saves this book from didacticism, what lifts it beyond its confessional tradition, is its language. She plays. She takes language and tosses it, tries it, tests it to see how it will bend.

Interesting to think of it in comparison with Linda McCarriston's "Eva-Mary"

[Danielle DeTiberus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a superb collection of poems, never mind the fact that it is the poet's first book. Astutely structured, heartbreaking, honest, and unique: this is a "novel in poems" that works; it is a torch song and an unflinching apology for all those choices we come to regret. I cannot wait to read Nickole's next book!

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't speak to me. Couldn't tell if the poems were autobiographical or fiction, and that bothered me more than I would've expected -- either way, I think I need more elegant turns of phrase in my free verse.

[Lieutenant Thornback (LT) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful novel in poems by the beautiful Nickole Brown. Poignant, brilliant, and human in the best sense of the word.

[Carol Bachofner · Rating 4 out of 5]

amazing book. Her voice is thick with region and relevance. I am bowled over by it and it will NOT be a book that makes it to my personal slush pile when I clean out shelves! It's a keeper!

[Michel · Rating 5 out of 5]

My sister wrote this and it is amazing. I love her.

[Ashly Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been sitting on my shelf for so long that I no longer remember what drew me to Nickole Brown, but I remember being really excited about this author and book. There is a familiarity to her writing style that I must have seen elsewhere and that I found again here in this collection. Brown's form and intelligence in the way she shapes her poetry speaks to me.

The content in this book is very dark, and I am glad I got the second edition which includes an afterword and also a conversation with the author that adds some hope and lightness which I found super necessary.

The book is billed as a novel in poems. At first I was concerned that possibly the poems wouldn't or couldn't stand on their own as part of a larger more cohesive and cooperative work, but especially after reading the conversation with Brown, I didn't find it to be an issue at all. The recurring themes and imagery made each poem that much stronger.

This book is not for the faint of heart, but it is a very strong collection of poetry! I can't wait to read more from this author.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

easily some of the best poetry i have ever read

[Libby Gerdes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic debut collection, rounded down from 4.5

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to admit, this book read to me like a textbook approach to themes of abuse, incest, etc. Sadly, this is a book of poetry, which made me feel that the art here was not so much an exploration into the deep complications of such material, but framing it all in a way that publishers will like, which distanced me more and more from the poems themselves.

[Red Hen Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nickole Brown writes in a voice that is simultaneously vernacular and lyrical. It is a voice thick with the humidity and whirring cicadas of Kentucky, but the poems are dangerous, smelling of the crisp cucumber scent of a copperhead about to strike. Epistolary in nature, and with a novel’s arc, Sister is a story that begins with a teen giving birth to a baby girl—the narrator—during a tornado, and in some ways, that tornado never ends.

In the hands of a lesser poet, this debut collection would be a standard-issue confession, a melodramatic exercise in anger and self-pity. But melodrama requires simple villains and victims, and there is neither in this richly complex portrait. Ultimately, Sister is more about the narrator’s transgressions and failures, more about her relationships to her sister and their mother than about that which divided them. With equal parts sass and sorrow, these poems etch out survival won not with tender-hearted reflections but by smoking cigarettes through fly-specked screens, by using cans of aerosol hair spray as a makeshift flamethrowers, and, most cruelly, by leaving home and trying to forget her sister entirely. From there, each poem is a letter of explanation and apology to that younger sister she never knew.

Sister recounts a return to a place that Brown never truly left. It is a book of forgiveness, of seeking what is beyond mere survival, of finding your way out of a place of poverty and abuse only to realize that you must go back again, all the way back to where everything began—that warm, dark nest of mother.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a poet. I like poetry. But few collections of poetry keep me as enamored as Sister. I read it straight through, cover to cover. Then back tracked my way through the poems. Not only are the poems strong and full of voice, character, and place (something that every good poet/fiction writer should be able to do), the layout of the book is the best I've ever read as an instruction guide on how to layout a poetry collection so that it resonates best. Perhaps, this is what I'm currently looking for as I try to lay out my own collection, but nonetheless, this collection shows a reader how it is done correctly. And how when it is done correctly, the poems individually become chapters of the greater narrative that overlap and double in meaning. Her words bleed on the page, but they don't drip into a messy pile in your lap. They are dark and fabulous. They are as pure as the feelings she writes about. This is a collection of pain, of forgiveness, and of love.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fortunate enough to have Nickole as my poetry professor, and in rereading these poems in this new edition I can hear her teaching me the importance and fun of line breaks and letting myself write bad poetry in order to get to the good stuff. I am still in awe of the craft it took to produce this body of work, and I will always be thankful to her for letting my voice be heard. Her poems are insightful, relevant, and so, so necessary.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection. Brown's first book is a narrative collection that looks at the relationship between sisters who have a large difference in age and who have both been sexually abused by a stepfather. Loved it. Poetry International will be publishing my review of the collection.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Sister" from Nickole Brown is a poetry book that is very complex and beautifully written. I really like the poems "The Smell of Snake" and "Sticky Fingers" along with others, this is a novel-made of poems about Sisters and mothers. I found it very enojoyable.

[Gabs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like someone else said- beautiful, brutal. It was incredible to have studied under this woman then be able to read her book. Stunned, disturbed, crying, aching at the economy of language and the real-as-dirt southern descriptions.
Oh, the hot repentant air....


A must-read

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nickole Brown's first book is full of startling images and ripe, full language. I love a good novel in poem clothing.

[Terri]

Writing group peeps!

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

truly exquisite in its honesty-lush and magical writing coupled with pure Kentucky grit

[Wendy Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

compelling, disturbing, extraordinary. This narrative/lyric of abusive childhood and triumphant getaway is the song sister love croons escaping, leaving a sibling behind.

[M. Gaffney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting and intimate.