sad boy / detective

Absolutely beautiful

The imagery and sincerity of Sam's collection make this a brisk and powerful read.

Poet Sam Sax is one of the most sensitively creative masters of the poetic medium writing today. He is a 2015 NEA Creative Writing Fellow and Poetry Fellow at The Michener Center for Writers, where he serves as the Editor-in- chief of Bat City Review. He's a two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion & author of the chapbooks A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters, SAD BOY / DETECTIVE, All The Rage, and is co- editor of the anthology The Dead Animal Handbook. His poems are forthcoming in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Boston Review, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Poetry Magazine, Pleiades, TriQuarterly + other journals. But impressive as these newly won credentials are they do not begin to open the window wide enough to view his talent. In a word, he is extraordinary.SAD BOY /DETECTIVE tackles the coming of age syndrome that all youngsters enter, though in the case of Sad Boy the genre is further complicated by the fact that the narrator is gay. Sam uses these sonnet form poems to share the conundrums of facing a life askew form ‘normal’ and in doing so does so much for the same sex discussion that is so au courant that surely will be up for awards on multiple levels – poetry, social studies, gender studies etc.The only way to share the power behind these poems is to quote one:the boy detective gets scared straightmen in their night blue button-up uniformstake the children through the theater of incarcerationthe locked-in leather backseat of the squad car,what steel feels like against the wrist. at the stationthe children leave their fingerprints and take inkinto general population. the bars aren’t the kindyou’ll find on television, here everything is glass.men in tan jumpsuits are brought in to scarethe children into children, they yell from their deepestregister, tell what kinds of breakage happen in the skinand the brain. the boy imagines spending his lifethis way. to have a man stand above him,tell him what he is, to be taken up in arms,how nice that would be, to be given a uniform.Sam Sax is an artist and poet about whom we will be hearing much. He is one of the most uniquely gifted young poets to come along in a while. Read this book! Grady Harp, November 15

Sax's sonnets in "sad boy/detective" investigate boyhood, coming-of-age, and sexuality in a frank and lyrical ways. In "the boy detective searches for love," he finds it in "the mirror's veil falling in the eyes of another / boy across the cafeteria counter." And in this world, where "the boy detective dresses up as a girl detective" the reader learns that "halloween is a night when people dress up exactly who they are." I highly recommend this chapbook from Black Lawrence, and I am looking forward to reading Sax's full-length collection, Madness.

A beautiful series of poems. Still Sam’s best in my humble opinion. Carry them with me wherever I go