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The Penguin Poets
Madness
An "astounding" (Terrance Hayes) debut collection of poems - Winner of the 2016 National Poetry Series Competition
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.
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.
96 pages, Paperback
First published September 12, 2017
40 people are currently reading
2210 people want to read
About the author
Sam Sax
20 books236 followerssam sax is a queer, jewish, writer and educator. They're the author of PIG (2023, Scribner) and Yr Dead (2024, McSweeney’s), as well as Madness, winner of The National Poetry Series and ‘Bury It’ winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They're the two time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems and stories published in The New York Times, Granta, The Los Angeles Review of Books and elsewhere. Sam's received fellowships from The NEA, Poetry Foundation, MacDowell, and is currently serving as an ITALIC Lecturer at Stanford University
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 140 reviews
August 25, 2017
This is a really sophisticated collection of poetry. I enjoyed it quite a lot in how it examined sexuality, mental health, sickness, health. The On... poems were particularly strong and compelling, the ones I read several times. I was intrigued by the collection's structure and the various formal approaches. Sometimes I am not sure I understood everything but that's okay. Excellent book overall.
April 8, 2018
A powerful collection of poems meditating on sex, death, illness, diagnoses both historical and contemporary. What it means to love, to lust, to lose connection with life.
The formal constructions of the poem are also interesting, capturing the wild essence into measured structures.
I'd rate a 4.5 but round it up to 5 stars. Worth reading for the passion and the language and the skill that contains both.
The formal constructions of the poem are also interesting, capturing the wild essence into measured structures.
I'd rate a 4.5 but round it up to 5 stars. Worth reading for the passion and the language and the skill that contains both.
October 4, 2018
Gay. Jewish. Addict. Poet.
If all politics is identity politics, then certainly all poetry is identity poetry.
But whereas I hear people bemoan identity politics, I can't imagine anyone doing the same for a poem. An artist will insert themselves into their art. How can they not?
Sam Sax is a gay, Jewish, addict poet. And if there is an identity poetry, he is certainly embracing it and enhancing it.
Madness is a collection of poems about identity. But lest you think the topic of identity has become tiresome and uninspired, his vehicle (Appendix C of the DSM-I (1952)) refreshes it with the paradoxical breath of the asylum.
Madness begins each section with the heading "Nomenclature." The naming. The identifying. What is it? Who are you? What are you? The opening page of each section lists the psychiatric nomenclature from Appendix C, and every section it appears it has faded from the previous time you've seen it, until by the end, nomenclature has returned to nature, (n ature) and we're left with a shell of punctuation marks and spaces where once the words were life.
If you're anything like me, you're unfamiliar with many psychiatric terms, and will look up trepan, theia mania, klonopin, mysophobia, or trichotillomania. You'll look at the diagnosis, "urge to say words," and think to yourself: I think I have that. And then you'll realize you were tempted to say that very diagnosis out loud. If you're anything like me, you'll read the poem, "On Hysteria" and wonder if doctors really "cured" this disorder by masturbating their female patients, and if that really was how the vibrator was invented. Is Sam Sax making this stuff up? Is the C-Section not named for Julius Caesar?
And if he was honest about that part, is he being honest about his grandfather being a psychotherapist at the time, and "medicating" his female patients that way?
"i asked him about the practice
he smiled
said everyone left feeling better"
And later in the poem,
"what does it mean to be descendant
of something monstrous?
to still love the monster?"
And here, with these lines, we enmesh identity poetry and identity politics. They are questions all honest people will be faced with. Asking and answering.
In a way, I understand what the people who identify as "anti-identity politics" are saying. Take what Sax says about his poem, Relapse:
"Living in the identity of a sober person comes with its fare [sic*] share of rhetoric & language that you must negotiate, decide to opt into or out of. What's the difference between having addiction issues, and being an addict? What happens when you take the language of addiction into your body and use it to define yourself & later when I started drinking again, how was I to re-negotiate my identity as a sober person?" (Source)
Why does he have to be an addict poet, or a sober poet, or a relapsed poet? Why can't he just be a poet? On the other hand: we are. We are different people at different stages of our lives, and when we insert ourselves into art or life we're inserting the current version of ourselves. That will naturally come through.
This was the best collection of poetry I've read in a while. I had to slow myself down, I was tearing through it.
*I think the Poetry Society made a typo here... but they're all so damn clever with their words, maybe it was intentional? Freaking poets...
If all politics is identity politics, then certainly all poetry is identity poetry.
But whereas I hear people bemoan identity politics, I can't imagine anyone doing the same for a poem. An artist will insert themselves into their art. How can they not?
Sam Sax is a gay, Jewish, addict poet. And if there is an identity poetry, he is certainly embracing it and enhancing it.
Madness is a collection of poems about identity. But lest you think the topic of identity has become tiresome and uninspired, his vehicle (Appendix C of the DSM-I (1952)) refreshes it with the paradoxical breath of the asylum.
Madness begins each section with the heading "Nomenclature." The naming. The identifying. What is it? Who are you? What are you? The opening page of each section lists the psychiatric nomenclature from Appendix C, and every section it appears it has faded from the previous time you've seen it, until by the end, nomenclature has returned to nature, (n ature) and we're left with a shell of punctuation marks and spaces where once the words were life.
If you're anything like me, you're unfamiliar with many psychiatric terms, and will look up trepan, theia mania, klonopin, mysophobia, or trichotillomania. You'll look at the diagnosis, "urge to say words," and think to yourself: I think I have that. And then you'll realize you were tempted to say that very diagnosis out loud. If you're anything like me, you'll read the poem, "On Hysteria" and wonder if doctors really "cured" this disorder by masturbating their female patients, and if that really was how the vibrator was invented. Is Sam Sax making this stuff up? Is the C-Section not named for Julius Caesar?
And if he was honest about that part, is he being honest about his grandfather being a psychotherapist at the time, and "medicating" his female patients that way?
"i asked him about the practice
he smiled
said everyone left feeling better"
And later in the poem,
"what does it mean to be descendant
of something monstrous?
to still love the monster?"
And here, with these lines, we enmesh identity poetry and identity politics. They are questions all honest people will be faced with. Asking and answering.
In a way, I understand what the people who identify as "anti-identity politics" are saying. Take what Sax says about his poem, Relapse:
"Living in the identity of a sober person comes with its fare [sic*] share of rhetoric & language that you must negotiate, decide to opt into or out of. What's the difference between having addiction issues, and being an addict? What happens when you take the language of addiction into your body and use it to define yourself & later when I started drinking again, how was I to re-negotiate my identity as a sober person?" (Source)
Why does he have to be an addict poet, or a sober poet, or a relapsed poet? Why can't he just be a poet? On the other hand: we are. We are different people at different stages of our lives, and when we insert ourselves into art or life we're inserting the current version of ourselves. That will naturally come through.
This was the best collection of poetry I've read in a while. I had to slow myself down, I was tearing through it.
*I think the Poetry Society made a typo here... but they're all so damn clever with their words, maybe it was intentional? Freaking poets...
Read
September 1, 2020"I carry much nostalgia for the times I don't remember"
April 25, 2018
This collection is brutal. It is brilliant, too, especially in its first section and intermittently throughout the remainder. But it is *brutal* and even spacing it out over time, the cumulative experience is a bit tiring. Sax pulls no punches in talking about the ways in which science, medicine, and culture have oppressed people (of color, of differing religions, of different sexualities) over the centuries and particularly over the last ~70 years. Using the framework of the DSM-I is an inspired touch and this one is well worth your time - just be prepared to emotionally work before you make it out the other side.
February 9, 2018
My foray into books of poetry this year has been hugely successful! Sam Sax's collection stood out for its dynamic use of diction and sound devices. Here you'll find some of the most expert uses of internal rhyme, and his experiments with form and structure are often jaw-dropping.
The brave content covers mental illness, sexual health, queer issues (including a powerful poem on conversion therapy), but the way Sax packages and organizes the collection is simply outstanding.
The brave content covers mental illness, sexual health, queer issues (including a powerful poem on conversion therapy), but the way Sax packages and organizes the collection is simply outstanding.
Read
September 7, 2023What did I do when I couldn't read prose because I was mad? I read poetry about being mad. I didn't necessarily like all the poems in this collection, but I did find them all interesting.
March 24, 2018
I'm so grateful this collection exists and that I somehow stumbled heart-first into it. This world needs more poetry books and children's books and all kinds of books about mental illness.
Here are a few of the lines/images/poetry power punches that spoke to me most vividly:
i once believed survival had something
to do with language
—from "Psychotherapy"
the way the sounds of ecstasy
are the same as the sounds of pain...
put that in a poem,
—from "Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center"
me covered in bugs
in my brain again.
—from "Diagnosis"
no one carries the already drowned out
of the river unless they cared for the body
while it lived. i'm standing at the edge
of the river & naming all the garbage
floating past, my sadness. the bodies,
the bodies, my sadness. the boats
& the bloated animals & the broken-in
houses, mine.
—from "Melancholia"
plato said some shit
& here we are
rats in chemical rapture
drones of light
this state of mind
a fevered state
a matter of nation
i know no god
but am frenzied
by all of them
every morning
we stand
hand over heart
in praise of a flag
stitched together
by enslaved women
—from "Theia Mania"
[Five stars for brave truth-telling in the darkest and most important of places.]
Here are a few of the lines/images/poetry power punches that spoke to me most vividly:
i once believed survival had something
to do with language
—from "Psychotherapy"
the way the sounds of ecstasy
are the same as the sounds of pain...
put that in a poem,
—from "Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center"
me covered in bugs
in my brain again.
—from "Diagnosis"
no one carries the already drowned out
of the river unless they cared for the body
while it lived. i'm standing at the edge
of the river & naming all the garbage
floating past, my sadness. the bodies,
the bodies, my sadness. the boats
& the bloated animals & the broken-in
houses, mine.
—from "Melancholia"
plato said some shit
& here we are
rats in chemical rapture
drones of light
this state of mind
a fevered state
a matter of nation
i know no god
but am frenzied
by all of them
every morning
we stand
hand over heart
in praise of a flag
stitched together
by enslaved women
—from "Theia Mania"
[Five stars for brave truth-telling in the darkest and most important of places.]
January 8, 2018
I want to re-read this immediately. So very good! Speechless.
January 8, 2021
these are definitely words! pretty words, glued together. to me it’s all that these poems are. words arranged together to look pretty and deep. i’m sad bc i was really looking forward to this, and it didn’t made me feel anything other than “these are pretty words” or, as sam would write it:
these are pretty
words
i guess the author, whether accidentally or intentionally made these words too personal, that is, not universal enough for me to relate. am i basic? are these poems too niche and specific and only gay north american white men can relate to them?
these are pretty
words
i guess the author, whether accidentally or intentionally made these words too personal, that is, not universal enough for me to relate. am i basic? are these poems too niche and specific and only gay north american white men can relate to them?
August 25, 2022
A remarkable book examining madness (noun) across spacetime and bodymind, as well as Maddening ways of knowing family / history / spirituality / temporality. Sax does an amazing job incorporating outside text/information subtly and naturally; Madness’s poetic sophistication is just as strong as it’s ear for storytelling. I’m filing this text away as an example of Mad Memoir that defies genre.
The care with which these poems were curated and ordered is obvious, and the result is a real masterpiece made of time and care. Excited to return to this text again and again.
The care with which these poems were curated and ordered is obvious, and the result is a real masterpiece made of time and care. Excited to return to this text again and again.
May 15, 2017
"keep giving lust
an ugly name, i'll keep making it
sing."
an ugly name, i'll keep making it
sing."
February 2, 2018
Ugh. Not sure what to say exactly but I did not enjoy these poems.
June 20, 2022
Wow, my thoughts on this collection are hard to put into words. Madness is a new favorite poetry collection of mine, largely because of how innovative and thought-provoking I found the structure of the collection to be. Sax’s blend of earnest writing and stark, ostensibly emotionless medical terminology is something I personally haven’t seen in a poetry collection, and I think the use of such a structural set-up really helped to amplify the emotional weight of Madness. I like forward to reading Sax’s other work soon!
June 19, 2024
3.5 // i’m either too dumb to enjoy poetry or my english is just not as advanced as i thought. but there were some lovely poems about queerness and mental health that i bookmarked 😊
December 19, 2017
The way sam sax plays with form has always been of great interest to me. sax, in this full-length collection of poems, beautifully combines research (using quotes from the very first DSM), linguistics, chilling content, genius enjambment, culture, as well as history. sam sax never disappoints.
January 8, 2023
“who were we before germ theory / back in the liquid days of humors // when tumors grew from an imbalance in black bile. / who were we back // in the miasma days”
November 2, 2023
One of my favorite poets. Everything he touches turns to GOLD.
Read
May 18, 2022a fine time, a good time. i liked the space it explored, this toothache space where we submit to or forcibly experience contemporary psychiatry and medicine for our benefit(?), while holding up against it the fact that it was-and-is used as an act of violence against homosexuality. i feel like juxtaposing the sterility of medical jargon against the flushed richness of lived experience or intuition or history could have gotten overwrought or boring hella fast, but he really pulls it off.
i think poems about being horribly sad and a little lonely and maybe horribly sad in a specifically gay way and dealing with that by drinking and having identity-obliterating sex are super reader-contextual on if they work right? there are many poems in this genre, these ones worked for me very well. favorite line on this vein: "there must be something else / worth praising besides pleasure / & destruction". yum.
i think poems about being horribly sad and a little lonely and maybe horribly sad in a specifically gay way and dealing with that by drinking and having identity-obliterating sex are super reader-contextual on if they work right? there are many poems in this genre, these ones worked for me very well. favorite line on this vein: "there must be something else / worth praising besides pleasure / & destruction". yum.
March 31, 2020
cool . this collection really let it out. a gratifying read for you who is mystified and frustrated by pathology, medical meddling of any kind. if you are amused by the dymanics between doctor and patient, if you are uncovering the truth behind what lets medicine exist. this is a smart ad also, sexy, and also, heartwrenching collection about what happend to our hearts when we let nature be categorized by science!
October 15, 2017
every morning
we stand
hand over heart
in praise of a flag
stitched together
by enslaved women
every book burning
only exists
if the flames are
remembered or recorded
every anthem
sung is a scythe of birds
graphing the sky
love at first sight
is only possible
if the government
hasn't first
taken your eyes
we stand
hand over heart
in praise of a flag
stitched together
by enslaved women
every book burning
only exists
if the flames are
remembered or recorded
every anthem
sung is a scythe of birds
graphing the sky
love at first sight
is only possible
if the government
hasn't first
taken your eyes
November 24, 2019
I like the reverent irreverence of these poems and the way they dig into the marrow and suck. There's so much potent material about the nature of medicalization and whose purposes it serves here. On brain desire chemical spiritual skull fucking need to name define prescribe & rectify. I'm excited to read Sax's next book of poetry
July 26, 2018
The poems about hysteria (both internal and mass) and melancholy were both gutting and great. I think each poem requires a different mindset to approach, and it would be good to come back to this collection when my mental state was other than it is now, to see how the poems work on me then.
February 7, 2021
writing poetry well isn’t for everyone and especially not for sam sax, it seems.
if you separated some lines from these “poems,” it would work well as an angsty tumblr post written by a pretentious teenager.
if you separated some lines from these “poems,” it would work well as an angsty tumblr post written by a pretentious teenager.
January 30, 2022
Sadddd Sexy Jewish Gay poetry always worthy of a reread . Love poems that dissect language and mourning and history of mental health/illness
“a boy’s kicked out of his house so he moves into the baths + becomes the steam” like Come On
“a boy’s kicked out of his house so he moves into the baths + becomes the steam” like Come On
April 29, 2024
[I'm not writing any sort of review on here anymore, as Amazon owns GoodReads and is not a friend to bookstores and more entities that I love. Pls read the book 50 Ways to Protect Bookstores, and yes, I am not long for this platform.]
September 16, 2018
Wow. Started out reading, thinking I had time to read a couple of poems. Read until I finished the whole book instead. So good.
November 10, 2018
"every time i drink i lose someone"
July 31, 2022
"you either love the world or you live in it"
January 8, 2023
Full of knock out lines. I scribbled so many into my journals. He’s worth the hype.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 140 reviews