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Joy Is My Middle Name: Poems
Hilarious, moving, and accessible, the poems in this extraordinary debut interrogate patriotism in a deeply flawed country.
Joy Is My Middle Name documents crawling through your twenties and emerging into your thirties. Walking uneasy cities and rural towns, talking about sex, race, womanhood, addiction, sobriety, consumerism, and pop culture, these poems pull at the edges of the performed self with conversational ease.
Humble, giddy, bold, empathetic, subversive, hilarious, lithe—the collection feels like a conversation with your greatest friend, over the best dinner. Full of stories, character, awkward silence, relatable sentiment; the buzz of perfect moments are funneled onto the page.
My Granny was only 18 when she had my father, and decided to leave
Virginia, but in a book they’d call that the Great Migration.
She was supposed to get off the train in New York City
but it scared her too much. It was too loud. So we grew up
in Connecticut instead. Sometimes history is as simple as that.
—from “John Brown’s Birthplace”
Joy Is My Middle Name documents crawling through your twenties and emerging into your thirties. Walking uneasy cities and rural towns, talking about sex, race, womanhood, addiction, sobriety, consumerism, and pop culture, these poems pull at the edges of the performed self with conversational ease.
Humble, giddy, bold, empathetic, subversive, hilarious, lithe—the collection feels like a conversation with your greatest friend, over the best dinner. Full of stories, character, awkward silence, relatable sentiment; the buzz of perfect moments are funneled onto the page.
My Granny was only 18 when she had my father, and decided to leave
Virginia, but in a book they’d call that the Great Migration.
She was supposed to get off the train in New York City
but it scared her too much. It was too loud. So we grew up
in Connecticut instead. Sometimes history is as simple as that.
—from “John Brown’s Birthplace”
- GenresPoetry
120 pages, Hardcover
Published August 5, 2025
16 people are currently reading
195 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
August 8, 2025
I picked up the Fitzcarraldo edition of this in Foyles at Waterloo Station and I love everything about it. Most importantly, every poem in it is brilliant. But it’s also a very nice little book. The paper quality is excellent, the font is lovely and easy to read, the text is well laid out, and the amusing, informative notes at the back deepen your insight into the poems and are a joy in themselves.
The first poem is called CENTO FOR THE NIGHT I TRIED STAND UP, which sets the tone perfectly. A cento is a patchwork of lines written by other people, in this case, various stand-up comedians, credited in the notes. This tells you the poet is aware of form and prepared to experiment. I love it when modern poets take well-established verse forms and have fun with them. It shows they’re aware of tradition and care about craft.
The title tells us she has tried stand-up. In other words, she likes making people laugh. A lot of poems in this collection do that. Some even read like stand-up routines. One is actually called STAND-UP ROUTINE.
This cento is, of course, funny. How can it not be when it uses lines from comedians? But it’s more than funny. It’s clever, endearing, and makes you think:
“…There is nothing /
you can do to us that we are not already doing /
to ourselves.”
In the notes, Sasha says this poem is inspired by Nicole Sealey’s “Cento for the Night I said, ‘I love you.’” There can be a self-referential, cliquey aspect to modern poetry that makes outsiders like me feel excluded, but I looked up Sealey’s poem and loved it. Sasha opened up the poetic landscape for me and broadened my horizon. She achieves so much with this opening poem.
Many of the poems are political. That’s inescapable. But they are playfully political. One is called I FEEL LIKE IF I’M NOT WRITING POLITICAL POEMS I’M WASTING MY TIME SO I MADE THIS CONTAINER FOR MYSELF IN WHICH NOT TO BE POLITICAL.
Let’s look at one of her nature poems, BERKSHIRES IN JULY.
She’s on vacation in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, and the first thing she notices is a huge sign saying her GPS might not work. Then:
The train full of recyclables passed /
underneath me.
I like the line break here. I can sense the rumbling vibration of the train as it passes underneath her, imposing itself on her vacation. It’s one of the many things that trouble her conscience and create anxiety.
It’s a short poem but I was surprised by how much I wanted to say about it. There’s gentle irony in almost every line. Although she’s describing the Berkshires, she does so through the perspective of a city dweller. She worries about recycling, chewing, what she should eat, how she should exercise. She must be productive — "don’t waste time," she reminds herself.
She doesn’t waste time going to the movie theatre even though she went five times because it’s only a ten-minute walk away. That’s very funny and funnier still on re-reading, after you’ve seen the “don’t waste time” line. This is a poem that rewards re-reading. It doesn’t yield all its pleasures immediately.
She loses her cell phone signal when calling her therapist. But what is she doing calling her therapist on vacation? The therapy sessions add to her anxiety because of the weak signal. The refrain “Do you hear me?” is repeated by the therapist but represents all the poet’s anxiety. She wants to be heard. That’s why she writes poems. There’s gentle self-mocking humour but it’s also semi-serious. This is one of the poems that has something in common with stand-up comedy. We can relate to it.
There’s a small note of triumph when she pees into a Dunkin Donuts cup on top of the highest peak. We remember the “don’t eat carbs” mantra and there’s another joke there. Then the poem ends on a small note of hope:
Since last week, when the monarch /
butterfly was declared endangered, /
I’ve seen four of them.
I’ll single out one more poem. It’s simply called LIKE. The poet is working as a waitress and shows a customer to a table at the back. The restaurant is crowded so:
he said, “You are packing /
us in here like on slave ships,”
Offended, the poet doesn’t confront the man directly but instead shows us a number of similes that could have been used instead. It’s a confident exhibition as the images spill onto the page. At first they’re funny, inventive, unexpected. But in the second stanza the tension rises until the poem reaches an explosive climax:
… Like the flames /
in a fire, like the fingers in my fist.
Beneath the wit is deep unease, a recognition of how language can wound, and how poetry can respond. The final image is violent but the poem itself is disarming. It shows us that metaphor matters and that casual speech can offend by association with historical oppression. What we compare things to reveals our values, our blind spots, and our political awareness.
This poem reminds me of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Diabelli invited composers to write a variation on his waltz. Initially dismissive of the banal theme, Beethoven wrote 33 variations in a monumental exploration of musical ideas. Sasha responds to a single offensive remark with a virtuosic display of poetic imagery. She doesn’t hit the man, she destroys him with poetry.
What a magnificent response and what a magnificent collection. Joy Is My Middle Name is witty, political, emotionally intelligent, and formally inventive. It’s a book that makes you laugh as much as it makes you think, and in doing so, begs to be heard.
The first poem is called CENTO FOR THE NIGHT I TRIED STAND UP, which sets the tone perfectly. A cento is a patchwork of lines written by other people, in this case, various stand-up comedians, credited in the notes. This tells you the poet is aware of form and prepared to experiment. I love it when modern poets take well-established verse forms and have fun with them. It shows they’re aware of tradition and care about craft.
The title tells us she has tried stand-up. In other words, she likes making people laugh. A lot of poems in this collection do that. Some even read like stand-up routines. One is actually called STAND-UP ROUTINE.
This cento is, of course, funny. How can it not be when it uses lines from comedians? But it’s more than funny. It’s clever, endearing, and makes you think:
“…There is nothing /
you can do to us that we are not already doing /
to ourselves.”
In the notes, Sasha says this poem is inspired by Nicole Sealey’s “Cento for the Night I said, ‘I love you.’” There can be a self-referential, cliquey aspect to modern poetry that makes outsiders like me feel excluded, but I looked up Sealey’s poem and loved it. Sasha opened up the poetic landscape for me and broadened my horizon. She achieves so much with this opening poem.
Many of the poems are political. That’s inescapable. But they are playfully political. One is called I FEEL LIKE IF I’M NOT WRITING POLITICAL POEMS I’M WASTING MY TIME SO I MADE THIS CONTAINER FOR MYSELF IN WHICH NOT TO BE POLITICAL.
Let’s look at one of her nature poems, BERKSHIRES IN JULY.
She’s on vacation in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, and the first thing she notices is a huge sign saying her GPS might not work. Then:
The train full of recyclables passed /
underneath me.
I like the line break here. I can sense the rumbling vibration of the train as it passes underneath her, imposing itself on her vacation. It’s one of the many things that trouble her conscience and create anxiety.
It’s a short poem but I was surprised by how much I wanted to say about it. There’s gentle irony in almost every line. Although she’s describing the Berkshires, she does so through the perspective of a city dweller. She worries about recycling, chewing, what she should eat, how she should exercise. She must be productive — "don’t waste time," she reminds herself.
She doesn’t waste time going to the movie theatre even though she went five times because it’s only a ten-minute walk away. That’s very funny and funnier still on re-reading, after you’ve seen the “don’t waste time” line. This is a poem that rewards re-reading. It doesn’t yield all its pleasures immediately.
She loses her cell phone signal when calling her therapist. But what is she doing calling her therapist on vacation? The therapy sessions add to her anxiety because of the weak signal. The refrain “Do you hear me?” is repeated by the therapist but represents all the poet’s anxiety. She wants to be heard. That’s why she writes poems. There’s gentle self-mocking humour but it’s also semi-serious. This is one of the poems that has something in common with stand-up comedy. We can relate to it.
There’s a small note of triumph when she pees into a Dunkin Donuts cup on top of the highest peak. We remember the “don’t eat carbs” mantra and there’s another joke there. Then the poem ends on a small note of hope:
Since last week, when the monarch /
butterfly was declared endangered, /
I’ve seen four of them.
I’ll single out one more poem. It’s simply called LIKE. The poet is working as a waitress and shows a customer to a table at the back. The restaurant is crowded so:
he said, “You are packing /
us in here like on slave ships,”
Offended, the poet doesn’t confront the man directly but instead shows us a number of similes that could have been used instead. It’s a confident exhibition as the images spill onto the page. At first they’re funny, inventive, unexpected. But in the second stanza the tension rises until the poem reaches an explosive climax:
… Like the flames /
in a fire, like the fingers in my fist.
Beneath the wit is deep unease, a recognition of how language can wound, and how poetry can respond. The final image is violent but the poem itself is disarming. It shows us that metaphor matters and that casual speech can offend by association with historical oppression. What we compare things to reveals our values, our blind spots, and our political awareness.
This poem reminds me of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Diabelli invited composers to write a variation on his waltz. Initially dismissive of the banal theme, Beethoven wrote 33 variations in a monumental exploration of musical ideas. Sasha responds to a single offensive remark with a virtuosic display of poetic imagery. She doesn’t hit the man, she destroys him with poetry.
What a magnificent response and what a magnificent collection. Joy Is My Middle Name is witty, political, emotionally intelligent, and formally inventive. It’s a book that makes you laugh as much as it makes you think, and in doing so, begs to be heard.
September 27, 2025
The best poetry collection I’ve read all year.
August 15, 2025
I’ll come back to this often
July 16, 2025
didn’t love this as much as i thought i would. some poems got a laugh out of me, but a lot had titles better than the actual poem content.
August 8, 2025
Very good poetry. And also I KNEW(!) I wasn’t the only person that cut up worms as a kid.
November 3, 2025
So awesome. I loved reading through the final section of Debts, Sources, Notes and discovering more poems and stories! What a fun treat before closing the book.
October 19, 2025
Una brutalidad de poemario. En todos los sentidos y desde la mayor admiración.
"Joy is my middle name!
can it please feel like that for once!
Joy is my mother fucking middle name!"
"Joy is my middle name!
can it please feel like that for once!
Joy is my mother fucking middle name!"
May 7, 2025
Sasha is a star. Every poem feels so lived in, and loved. Joy Is My Middle Name never lulls as it introduces you to character after character. Some you know, others you can’t root for, and some you will never forget; all thanks to a poet who’s unafraid to incorporate fun and humor into our most human experiences.
May 13, 2025
“Welcome to the place / where my jokes come from. Please / adjust your expectations, dear reader. / We've got a lot of shit to talk / about. I'm happy you're here. / I need you.” The opening stanza from the opening poem (‘Cento for the Night I Tried Stand-Up’) in Sasha Debevec-McKenney’s blistering collection Joy Is My Middle Name perfectly sets the tone for the rest of the collection: carefully constructed to balance craft and candour, painfully, at times even obnoxiously funny (I say that with deep affection for the obnoxiously funny). In her notes at the end of the collection (‘Debts, Sources, Notes’) — a piece in its own right — she astutely and wryly observes “I believe poetry and stand-up are the same, except stand-up routines take the audience's enjoyment into consideration. Also, stand-ups don't try and hide the fact that, at their core, they only want to be liked.” ‘Sestina Where Every End Word Is Lyndon Johnson’ is another perfect example of her weaponising humour, and is the kind of poem that pushes form and language to their limits. But there are moments where her dark humour is utterly sobering, as in one of the collection’s standouts, ‘On Days I Believe in the Death Penalty’: “In polite conversation at an otherwise / empty bar, a man told me / he was proud his family fought / for the Confederacy, and I said I wish / your whole bloodline had ended there: / thin and shoeless on a battlefield, / neck blown open. I got kicked out / of the bar. Tonight, in Bushwick, / in line at a taco truck pop-up, / in the middle of an art gallery, / I thought to myself, this wouldn't be the worst place / for a bomb to go off.” Who else is delivering such precise blows in poetry right now? It stopped me and keeps stopping me every time I think about it. Debevec-McKenney’s debut collection is published 3 July by Fitzcarraldo, who are cementing their poetry list — following Seuss and Olayiwola — as one of the best in contemporary publishing. Thanks so much to Fitzcarraldo for the early proof!
August 15, 2025
Just as Debevec-McKenney's notes on each poem at the back of the book provide essential commentary that can't be separated from the content of each piece, the collection itself can't quite stand on its own without a great deal of contextualizing. In the end, I wasn't very impressed, though I did find my way into a few of these and came away from the book pleased to be acquainted with the poet's voice. She's nice, funny, and every once in a while she lets her guard down long enough to be something like poignant, but mostly she's (justifiably) angry and there's a numbness pervading this collection that stops the reader from getting too close.
July 14, 2025
A debut that makes you giddy and say shit like “oh, we’re so back.” Politically charged, self-aware, funny, compassionate poems that embody life in all its love, grief and frustrations. Reading this evoked thrilling sensations in me that I once felt after drinking multiple passionfruit martinis in quick succession at All Bar One, and I felt it again after reading Sasha’s debut.
September 22, 2025
Absolutely adored this collection. It has such range and had me laughing out loud and then quietly crying. The fascination with the American Presidents is interesting and adds a historical element to the generally very female led commentary. It is very accessible and really a complete joy to read. I will come back to this in the future to dip in and out of.
November 7, 2025
I loved these poems, especially with the notes at the end adding context. I have some real quotable lines that I loved and some poems will stay in your mind long after you’ve finished. Yes some poems caused this old white person to raise an eyebrow or two, but what an entree into the poet’s mind this book is. I love it and will re-read parts often.
July 16, 2025
This is a book with a lot of energy. Her voice is very approachable and funny, riffs on modern middle-class life. It's quirky and original enough to prevent it from being winsome. I wasn't sure it was the book I was looking for, but it was.
June 10, 2025
American Quirk.
July 8, 2025
Good lord, I wish this collection was longer. Absolutely blew me away
August 11, 2025
have already reread so many times i love so hugely it’s perfect no notes mwah
August 14, 2025
I love this book!!!!!!!!!
August 15, 2025
this changed me!
August 15, 2025
Poetry hyper fixation is back (thanks adhd). Also thanks Sasha, for writing a poem called your brain is not a prison! and other relatable gems.
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August 24, 2025ty sasha for getting me back into annotating. unrateable book it is poetry
August 30, 2025
book so bad I didn't even finish it
October 24, 2025
The fact that Sasha is from my hometown of Windsor, CT is literally the coolest thing about Windsor, CT. Apologies to the guy from NRBQ, but Sasha takes the W on this one.
Raw and emotional one second, and walloping you with a “Deep Thoughts” level one liner joke the next, Sasha’s writing is thoughtful, vulnerable, exceptionally hilarious and relentlessly surprising (You never know what’s coming next save for maybe a president or an ice cream cone!) The way I see it, any book of poetry that not only leaves the reader wanting to check out more of the author’s work, but also wanting to tune into the survivalist reality show “Alone” is pretty darn special.
A lovely, informative, and memorable time, to say the least!
Raw and emotional one second, and walloping you with a “Deep Thoughts” level one liner joke the next, Sasha’s writing is thoughtful, vulnerable, exceptionally hilarious and relentlessly surprising (You never know what’s coming next save for maybe a president or an ice cream cone!) The way I see it, any book of poetry that not only leaves the reader wanting to check out more of the author’s work, but also wanting to tune into the survivalist reality show “Alone” is pretty darn special.
A lovely, informative, and memorable time, to say the least!
October 24, 2025
She quotes James Acaster, I’m not gonna dislike someone’s work who is clearly on the same wavelength as me
November 4, 2025
This one’s for the former xoJane girlies who grew up to be Civil War dads.
November 4, 2025
my everything
November 15, 2025
There is so much life in these poems. Don’t skip the end notes.
July 5, 2025
Thoroughly enjoyed this, couldn't put it down. Witty, accessible, skilfully written. Funny and heartbreaking, and guttural. It really has a tone that transported me to my own chaotic years even though they were on a different continent.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews