Good Actors

by Sommer Browning

At birth we are given a role—it is our name. Good Actors is a side-eyed illumination of the artist as self-help guru, oracle, and sage, but more importantly as mother, lover, and friend.

Part psychological experiment, part conceptual art piece, part screenplay, Good Actors is 100% a joyful celebration of language and life. And because it is Sommer, the book is hilarious, melancholy, and existential.

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

Published March 10, 2022

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank You

Thank you, Moms Mabley.

Thank you, Moms Mabley and Phyllis Diller.

Thank you, Moms Mabley, who ran away at 14 to join a vaudeville troupe, and Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers.

Thank you, Moms Mabley and Phyllis Diller, who started doing standup at 37, and Joan Rivers and Carol Burnett.

Thank you, Moms Mabley, who came out at 27 in 1921, and Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers, who kept a note from Lenny Bruce that said, They’re wrong, you’re right, in her bra for years, and Carol Burnett.

Thank you, Moms Mabley, who came out at 27 in 1921, and Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers, who bombed every night for two years, and Carol Burnett, who said, There’s laughter in everything.

Thank you, Moms Mabley and Phyllis Diller, who started doing standup at 37, and Joan Rivers and Carol Burnett, who said, There’s laughter in everything, and Bea Arthur.

Thank you, Moms Mabley and Phyllis Diller, who started doing standup at 37, and Joan Rivers, who claims she was the first female host of the Tonight Show, but so does Florence Henderson, Phyllis Newman, and Della Reese, and who really cares anyway, and Carol Burnett and Bea Arthur, whose TV character, Maude, chose to get an abortion at age 47 in 1972.

Thank you, Moms Mabley, who gave birth to six people, and Phyllis Diller, who gave birth to five people, and Joan Rivers, who gave birth to one person, and Carol Burnett, who gave birth to three people, and Bea Arthur, who mothered two people.

Thank you.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do poems look like that have been fully socialized. Like they belong to the book, they belong to the poet, and they belong to me while I'm reading them. But they're also living at a party with friends. Playing jokes. Being funny. Asking those questions you only really ask at a party. Like the question that recurs between almost every poem in the book: "If you tell me which Twilight Zone episode you remember best, I can tell you what your problem is."

The poet inquireth, and the poet delivers. And it's the world implied by this kind of question that, for me, marks the book's ethos. We're all at this party together. We all know lots of us have been watching The Twilight Zone. And we all know Sommer's uncanny ability to match your favorite episode with a wry inner wisdom. It's fun going to parties and seeing your friends, and living with this exciting group of poets, and having ongoing topics we share, and how those topics keep growing. Like each new party is a new iteration of the same people getting together. An extended Happening, so to speak. And iteration in general might be one of the more prominent themes of the book. Like the poem, "Thank You," that's like a crochet of thank you notes to women comedians who were important to Browning. Or the absurd "All I Have to Do Is Act Naturally," with "Me" saying Hi to "The Void."

But, then, what about when you're not a part of the group? I like the group. I like groups that are made up of poets. But I wonder whether a group so conspicuously represented in the book could be thought of conspicuously in the poems. I mean they're there. But I keep wanting something that elaborates on the poet--her wisdom, advice, and experiences--that says something more about the group dynamic or the social fabric where she's raising her family.

[Matt McBride · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somewhere there's a grad student working on defining the post-confessional (or maybe the post-post confessional? I don't know how many "posts" are necessary) and I hope they use this as the source text for their thesis. Browning at times mocks the genre (for example "People I've Gone to the Movies With" is just a list of first names, simultaneously giving us a list of a type of intimacy she's held with someone while not telling us anything). But, on the other hand, the book is seeringly personal (sneeringly personal?) looking at the struggles to find connection/satisfaction in the wake of a divorce. It's willing to go past comfort, to give us the sense of something "real" (for example, "Bad Sex"). It almost mocks the desire to find meaning in art or the desire to expect art to make us whole in some way. The lion's share of the book is a kind of performance piece where Browning asks people what their favorite Twilight Zone episode is and responds with a "therapy fueled aphorism that 'diagnoses' their 'problem.'" However, at the same time, the book seems to be begging art to accrue to something more (for example "Denver Is Home to the First Quiznos"). And all of this in a comic deadpan that leaves you unsure which feeling you are supposed to insert after pause.

[Ellen Metter · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a good day today. I won a session of online Scrabble, listened to a segment of Barack Obama’s Promised Land via a library-borrowed audiobook, and read Sommer Browning’s Good Actors.

I know I’m really enjoying a book when I laugh, cry (yes, truly cry,) nod, pause to mark a passage, and cringe (just once).

I’d like to share examples of the writing, but no one excerpt can capture the range in this collection of poetry, essays, thoughts, and humor. A few examples of things touched upon include preparing for the arrival of angels, diagnosing people’s problems based on their favorite Twilight Zone episode, and sex on ropes (this was not the cringe; this made me envious.)

Recommend this to read, keep, and read again.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sommer's like one of those friends who you love to hang out with, even if she's all over the place and following her thought process takes ninja brain skills. I always enjoy the inventive wit of her poems (sometimes more like jokes) and found a level of vulnerability in this collection that felt aching and alive. The Twilight Zone question-and-answer thread throughout (where Sommer tells you "what your problem is" based on the episode you remember most) was cool and had a perceptive vibe that felt like fortune telling. As she says in the poem, Life: A Draft (Prologue):
I want this to be a very, very serious joke book.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Browning Notes from the Plane
So funny, unexpected—seriously funny? How have I forgotten that syllabus. Humor is existential pain.
Pg 37: what is your failed AWP panel?
Autobiography poem
Love a poet whose style gives permission to be a human & poet
Poet: a culture documenting machine
I loved the crowdsourcing—we are a language collection of our experiences
Read on a 5 hour flight & was sad how I finished it, a very good “revisit while sitting in one place” book & just a good book: thoughtful, layered meaning among pithy prose poems & couplets

[Mark Folse]

This book brings a wry humor to the troubles of modern life. Wild youth, motherhood and the Twilight Zone collide deliciously in this collage of prose, lyric and list Browning blazes a path through modern life with a sharp eye and a clever humor that makes it all that much more bearable.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Touching, hilarious, and original as hell. Sommer Browning is 3-for-3 with her poetry collections. You need all three on your shelves.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The kind of book I have been looking for for a long time. I hope beyond all reason it has been looking for me.