Sad Boy / Detective

Winner of the Spring 2014 Black River Chapbook Competition
From his first appearance on the page, “ we knew he was bound for something unsolvable.” But a little thing like futility can’ t stop our hero from holding up a magnifying glass to a world “ so bright it’ s impossible to understand.” In this searching, provocative collection of coming-of-age sonnets, the sad boy detective listens close, collects the evidence, and reimagines the strange landscapes of a life, a body, a boy, a self. Through a questioning, fervent lens, Sam Sax’ s sad boy / detective reminds us how deeply bizarre and at times undecipherable all this existence stuff truly is.

sam sax is a 2015 NEA Creative Writing Fellow and Poetry Fellow at The Michener Center for Writers where he serves as the Editor-in-chief of Bat City Review. He's the two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion & author of the chapbooks A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters (Button 2014), sad boy / detective (Black Lawrence 2015), All The Rage (Sibling Rivalry 2016), & is co-editor of the anthology The Dead Animal Handbook (University of Hell 2016). His poems are forthcoming in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Boston Review, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Poetry Magazine, Pleiades, TriQuarterly + other journals.