“There are few things I love more in writing than the absolute pleasure(s) of multiple considerations — a writer who holds an object in their hand and turns it over, tenderly, affording an audience a look at their obsession from several angles. Sam Sax takes this to heights that only he is capable of in Pig, dissecting shape, sound, multiple etymologies, histories. These are poems as rich in playfulness as they are in heartbreak. But they shine in their relentless curiosity. grief is an animal is beautiful all on its own, but it is the questioning that follows — what kind of animal? let’s cut to the chase, after all.”

“For Jews, pork is terefah, forbidden food—and, in this book, with a surprisingly light touch, Sam Sax makes of the pig a powerful, all purpose symbol...Language is the salve for, or the weapon against, a disordered world.”

“Reminding us how long, and in what ways, the presumptive rule of heteronormativity has conspired to shame, kill and erase queerness, Sam Sax builds a bridge of sighs to mark the places where boys who love boys have been pushed or driven to jump. Buried inside these turbulent and tragic elegies are the sorrows so often borne in silence by queer or questioning youth. The unearthing and examination of these root causes of untimely death among at-risk kids forms a terrifying necrology, an urgent inquest into the violence perpetrated by a society still harboring hostility toward otherness. What Sax does herein is a holy ceremony, a kaddish that does not mourn but praise.”

“bury it, sam sax’s urgent, thriving excavation of desire, is lit with imagery and purpose that surprises and jolts at every turn. Exuberant, wild, tightly knotted mesmerisms of discovery inhabit each poem in this seethe of hunger and sacred toll of toil. A vitalizing and necessary book of poems that dig hard and lift luminously.”

“A] startling debut . . . I read Madness in a kind of fever, transported into its dreamscape of disorders, diagnoses, addictions, and procedures, shook by its lyrics of desire . . . [sax’s] poems hit like sacred stimulants and wake the body from torpor.”

“[A] beautifully concentrated howl of a book, a startling debut . . . coolly crafted . . . [sax is] refreshingly frank as he speaks out to us. A terrific first collection, highly recommended for poetry lovers.”