Review by Jami Macarty
In Upstage, poet Bruce Andrews and photographer Sally Silvers create a vibrant and disorienting urban experience of New Jersey’s Asbury Park. This collaborative work stands out not just for its atmospheric visuals and “boombox” text but also for the way it invites readers to reconsider their relationship with the world around them, especially in the context of the chaotic pandemic era.
As viewers and readers traverse the haunted streets of the pandemic, Silvers’s keen eye for detail provides anatomical structure, while Andrews’s lively text serves as a rhythmic pulse, creating a hypnotic effect that draws us into their shared vision. Through close-ups of patterns within a pattern, Silvers’s photographs orient us, even as they dislocate. Each image evokes a landscape that feels both familiar and alien, urging viewers to look closer and question their perceptions.
Andrews complements this visual storytelling with polyphonic word blocks that invite us to experience the “verbal showdowns” within polymodal signage. Information campaigns, medical incentives, motivational speeches, food advertisements, graffiti tags, and “1-800” numbers “mulch” together in a sort of “handbook of capitalism.” Whether decontextualizing the whole by fragmentation, as Silvers does, or recontextualizing fragments into a new whole, as Andrews does, each artist queries what it means to witness our surroundings.
By playing with abstraction and emphasis, presenting seemingly random configurations that reveal a method within madness, the artists capture the absurd seriousness of our times. In Upstage, Sally Silvers and Bruce Andrews have created a cultural portrait of modern life — a candid reflection on existence during tumultuous times. Their collaboration testifies to the resilience of art and creativity, showing us that even in isolation, meaningful connections can flourish as we navigate the strange beauty of our world together.
Upstage by Bruce Andrews & Sally Silvers. Ugly Duckling Presse, May 2024.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.
