Sam Sax begins their hilarious, touching, and human/humane book Pig with an Orwell quote from Animal Farm—"“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” It is impossible for me to say which Sax poems I enjoyed more—“Miss Piggy,” “a pig pulls out of paradise,” or “james dean with pig.” Inventive and political, tender and sensual, Sax’s poems use the concept of “pig” to talk about police violence, capitalism/”this little piggy went to market,” pet pigs, religious dietary restrictions, the swine flu, the pandemic’s outbreak in pork plants, ecology, pig hearts used in surgery, and the celebration and degradation of the human body. When Sax learns that their grandfather castrated pigs as a young person, they imagine “castrato pigs singing/opera oddly/wagner probably…” and later, in a companion poem “Author’s Note,” they write “I’ve never bred pigs. never fed pigs…only read pigs. only/ begged to be pig-bred. only been/ called pig/a hundred times…” In “Experiments,” they imagine revisiting a classroom of fetal pigs. In “Squeal Like A Pig,” they recontextualize Deliverance through a tender queerness: “boy hurting/boy hurt/never imagined/I could leave/become the trees….” Sax has seemingly and magnificently exhausted the subject, though they write in their opening poem “the first book written/about pigs was published/ in 3468 BC, the last will be this, until it isn’t….”
Congratulations, Sam!
I often feel a certain exhaustion from the incredible number of poems being published, almost daily. How does one find the ones worth reading or a sensibility that's different? And then I came across a Sam Sax poem on the back of a recent APR. I was blown away, stunned to see that a young poet could write like a master poet, effortlessly melding elements as if he'd been tutored by the metaphysical poet, John Donne. I'll look forward to this book.
Posted by: Peter Johnson | September 23, 2023 at 08:23 AM