Raised Ranch — Lauren Singer
Lauren Singer’s poems take the reader through a life, one room at a time. Raised Ranch is a lamentation of loneliness and loss with a witty distrust of self-help culture. The speaker, “hardened by a sorry lesson,” navigates death, divorce, aging, and sex with raw emotion and refreshing honesty. Characters come and go in this house, “this great big lonely nothing,” but it’s the speaker we’re drawn to as Singer confronts the deep corners of the self—both the rock and the hard place. Aching and intimate, these poems invite the reader inside, undoing the sense of isolation Singer skillfully describes.
—Isabelle Correa, author of Good Girl and Other Yearnings
Raised Ranch is the house that grief built. These painfully funny and open-hearted poems attest to a time when we were forced to shelter in place with our shadows. Trailed by the ghosts of a ripped-apart marriage and a stillborn child, the speaker moves through the showplace of perfection that no real woman can live up to, and wonders how it's possible to fail at adulthood when she never had a childhood. Maybe one day, she'll permit herself to have as healthy a relationship as her cat has with the mailman. Until then, there's the animal self-love of "porridge where all the raisins spell out 'mercy'". You'll cry till you laugh, and cry again, wanting to hold this character (and yourself) with a little more tenderness before you walk out the door.
—Jendi Reiter, author of Made Man and Origin Story, editor of WinningWriters.com
To me, there is something downright consoling about the refusal to be consoled that’s at the heart of Lauren Singer’s terrific Raised Ranch. Like her, I feel that the correct response to the disappearance of essential people or the loss of love would be for everything, and I do mean everything, to grind to a halt. It’s very simple: give me back the people / family / home I lost, and I’ll agree to be consoled, perhaps, another time. Give me back even the grossly inappropriate folks who treated me badly, and the shame at every felt impulse, because all that was normal, comfortable as an old, ruined shoe. Singer’s protagonist is onto herself: she knows her grief isn’t special. But don’t dare come at her with any soothing parables about acceptance. Her poems say fuck impermanence and the stupid horse it rode in on, trampling all our pretty plans. Singer’s art is a fire that leaves her own hands burnt—but maybe, please, also conjures the dear dead alive for another moment.
—Patrick Donnelly, author of Willow Hammer, Little-Known Operas, Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin, and The Charge
Lauren Singer’s poems take the reader through a life, one room at a time. Raised Ranch is a lamentation of loneliness and loss with a witty distrust of self-help culture. The speaker, “hardened by a sorry lesson,” navigates death, divorce, aging, and sex with raw emotion and refreshing honesty. Characters come and go in this house, “this great big lonely nothing,” but it’s the speaker we’re drawn to as Singer confronts the deep corners of the self—both the rock and the hard place. Aching and intimate, these poems invite the reader inside, undoing the sense of isolation Singer skillfully describes.
—Isabelle Correa, author of Good Girl and Other Yearnings
Raised Ranch is the house that grief built. These painfully funny and open-hearted poems attest to a time when we were forced to shelter in place with our shadows. Trailed by the ghosts of a ripped-apart marriage and a stillborn child, the speaker moves through the showplace of perfection that no real woman can live up to, and wonders how it's possible to fail at adulthood when she never had a childhood. Maybe one day, she'll permit herself to have as healthy a relationship as her cat has with the mailman. Until then, there's the animal self-love of "porridge where all the raisins spell out 'mercy'". You'll cry till you laugh, and cry again, wanting to hold this character (and yourself) with a little more tenderness before you walk out the door.
—Jendi Reiter, author of Made Man and Origin Story, editor of WinningWriters.com
To me, there is something downright consoling about the refusal to be consoled that’s at the heart of Lauren Singer’s terrific Raised Ranch. Like her, I feel that the correct response to the disappearance of essential people or the loss of love would be for everything, and I do mean everything, to grind to a halt. It’s very simple: give me back the people / family / home I lost, and I’ll agree to be consoled, perhaps, another time. Give me back even the grossly inappropriate folks who treated me badly, and the shame at every felt impulse, because all that was normal, comfortable as an old, ruined shoe. Singer’s protagonist is onto herself: she knows her grief isn’t special. But don’t dare come at her with any soothing parables about acceptance. Her poems say fuck impermanence and the stupid horse it rode in on, trampling all our pretty plans. Singer’s art is a fire that leaves her own hands burnt—but maybe, please, also conjures the dear dead alive for another moment.
—Patrick Donnelly, author of Willow Hammer, Little-Known Operas, Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin, and The Charge
Lauren Singer’s poems take the reader through a life, one room at a time. Raised Ranch is a lamentation of loneliness and loss with a witty distrust of self-help culture. The speaker, “hardened by a sorry lesson,” navigates death, divorce, aging, and sex with raw emotion and refreshing honesty. Characters come and go in this house, “this great big lonely nothing,” but it’s the speaker we’re drawn to as Singer confronts the deep corners of the self—both the rock and the hard place. Aching and intimate, these poems invite the reader inside, undoing the sense of isolation Singer skillfully describes.
—Isabelle Correa, author of Good Girl and Other Yearnings
Raised Ranch is the house that grief built. These painfully funny and open-hearted poems attest to a time when we were forced to shelter in place with our shadows. Trailed by the ghosts of a ripped-apart marriage and a stillborn child, the speaker moves through the showplace of perfection that no real woman can live up to, and wonders how it's possible to fail at adulthood when she never had a childhood. Maybe one day, she'll permit herself to have as healthy a relationship as her cat has with the mailman. Until then, there's the animal self-love of "porridge where all the raisins spell out 'mercy'". You'll cry till you laugh, and cry again, wanting to hold this character (and yourself) with a little more tenderness before you walk out the door.
—Jendi Reiter, author of Made Man and Origin Story, editor of WinningWriters.com
To me, there is something downright consoling about the refusal to be consoled that’s at the heart of Lauren Singer’s terrific Raised Ranch. Like her, I feel that the correct response to the disappearance of essential people or the loss of love would be for everything, and I do mean everything, to grind to a halt. It’s very simple: give me back the people / family / home I lost, and I’ll agree to be consoled, perhaps, another time. Give me back even the grossly inappropriate folks who treated me badly, and the shame at every felt impulse, because all that was normal, comfortable as an old, ruined shoe. Singer’s protagonist is onto herself: she knows her grief isn’t special. But don’t dare come at her with any soothing parables about acceptance. Her poems say fuck impermanence and the stupid horse it rode in on, trampling all our pretty plans. Singer’s art is a fire that leaves her own hands burnt—but maybe, please, also conjures the dear dead alive for another moment.
—Patrick Donnelly, author of Willow Hammer, Little-Known Operas, Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin, and The Charge