bury it

August 20, 2018
Sax (Madness) continues to tell a story of the gay body, both historical and personal, in this sophomore effort, winner of the 2017 James Laughlin Award. The historic is embodied via narratives passed down from those who survived the AIDS crisis. This fear, these death rituals connected to sex, inform Sax’s personal mythology. “ow can we bury the hatchet / when it always ends up in my back,” he asks, echoing a bodily pain that is inseparable from pleasure. The sex here leans more toward Thanatos than Eros—“paired animal bodies/ floating & bloated with salt.” In Sax’s creed, intimacy cannot be disentangled from carrion and disease. Unprotected sex, for example, gets compared to uncooked meat and the harmful bacteria potentially lurking inside. Sax’s homoeroticism relies not on the surface of skin, but what’s beneath: the horror of raw meat and red blood. This is not to say there’s no enjoyment in his words; the pleasures in Sax’s poems derive from his sonic mastery, as in “Risk” where the phrases “paradox of latex,” “paragon of intimacy,” and “my paramour, my minotaur, my matador flashing his red sword” all play off one another. Such wordsmithing is where Sax is at his best, providing gratification against the relentless obliteration and displeasure that haunts these poems. Agent: Nicholas Ward, NCW Booking.

Starred review from October 15, 2018

Winner of the 2017 James Laughlin Award, Sax's sophomore effort continues the themes and tenor of his debut (Madness), exploring the often tragic social and emotional complexities of queer life in America. Triggered by the alarmingly high suicide rate among young gay males, the poems here constitute a 21st-century Book of the Dead, a frank, often harrowing elegy to those for whom the unbearable denial and exclusion of their identities is relieved only by the ultimate negation of self, as "everyday another friend takes his narrative in his own hands." With uncompromising imagery--the bodies of three drowned boys are "white and soft as plastic grocery bags"--and candor ("I came out to my mother over text, each letter wept into place"), Sax escorts readers on a bleak journey to the interior that remains hidden to most. VERDICT The depth of the poet's empathy and lived experience together with his stylistic concision infuse these poems with an emotional authenticity that will speak not only to readers of poetry but also, paraphrasing William Carlos Williams, to those who suffer for lack of what is found there.--Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY

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