Monster Mash

by Susan Browne

Susan Browne (Winner of the Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry judged by Edward Hirsch) has crafted her fourth collection of poetry into an incendiary inventory of life’s urgency and vitality in this late-stage capitalist moment. In “Air Quality 500,” while Browne “[wonders] what the government [is] doing during this era of cannibalism,” “a bald eagle [flies] by with its head on fire.” Monster Mash explores the surreal lyricism of this phenomenon — when what sounds like hyperbolic symbolism is actually just the news. Even if the national bird aflame makes a fitting metaphor for the state of our body politic, it also transcribes a true emergency in the poet’s direct sight — wilderness and civilization smoldering alike in the California wildfires. Amid the existential scale of climate and economic crises, Browne’s poems deftly illuminate how we must also navigate the daily necessities of our individual tending to aging parents, grieving those who pass before us, “[waking] to the river of air conditioner noise,” “cleaning the litter box / or driving around the locked-down town, / looking for a house [you] can’t afford or a job that doesn’t exist.” In the words of Dorianne Laux, “Browne’s poems are songs to the suffering earth, to love in the face of the pitiless moon, merciless angels, [and] to the past and the future.” After all, Browne reminds us, not all of our wandering is aimless. The speaker at the wheel “wants to show you what’s still possible / out by the river, the egret & geese, / the fast-moving current, that autumn is here / & there, there, there / are dark pools of coolness under the leaves.”

 

Genres: Poetry

115 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2025

Reviews

[Clayton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book!! The commentary on the back of the jacket says it all. The poems are rich, deep and often funny! I have to watch my exclamation marks here because this read basically is one. I will return to this again and again. What an amazing writer.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about aging, relationships, capitalism, love, and nostalgia.

from You Wonder If You Can Write Something: "that has hope in it. / Today, you read, there's a big rush to by / bomb shelters. / Normal people are buying them, / not just millionaires. / There is some hope in that: / thinking life will go on after."

from Sometimes Melancholy Leaves Me Breathless: "Oh, the wild odds of having a life at all. / How brave it is to live, death silent within us, / the train blaring arrival & departure."

from In the Winter of My Sixty-Seventh Year: "These winter months are like open coffins / For frail oldsters to fall in / I once had a student who believed / We can be any age we want / In the afterlife / I'm desperate to be fifty / Six was also a good year"

[Sunni · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Susan Browne’s poetry, so it was no surprise to me that I relished this book. Favorite poems were: “Little Altar,” “No One But Us,” “Here,” and “Do You Have Children.” So much humor and grief in these poems and an honest reflection of how complex and beautiful it is to be human. This whole collection looks hard at the marvels of the earth and the universe, global warming and all its consequences, family griefs and loves, marriage, aging - and all the while Browne keeps hold of this voice that I can only describe as imminently compassionate, effortlessly likeable.