sam sax

In this ­­­powerful debut collection, sam sax explores and explodes the linkages between desire, addiction, and the history of mental health. These brave, formally dexterous poems examine antiquated diagnoses and procedures from hysteria to lobotomy; offer meditations on risky sex; and take up the poet’s personal and family histories as mental health patients and practitioners. Ultimately, Madness attempts to build a queer lineage out of inherited language and cultural artifacts; these poems trouble the static categories of sanity, heterosexuality, masculinity, normality, and health. sax’s innovative collection embodies the strange and disjunctive workings of the mind as it grapples to make sense of the world around it.

Featured Writer: 

sam sax is a queer, Jewish, writer & educator.

He is the author of Madness (Penguin, 2017) winner of The National Poetry Series selected by Terrance Hayes & ‘Bury It’ (Wesleyan University Press, 2018) winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. sam has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambda Literary, & the MacDowell Colony.

He’s the two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems in BuzzFeed, The Nation, The New York Times, Poetry Magazine, & other journals. sam has lead writing workshops all over the country from The Julliard School to UC Berkley, Texas State University to Oberlin College.

He’s the poetry editor at BOAAT Press & currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. sam is a recipient of the 2018 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.