When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother [Perfect Paperback]

Melissa Broder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 6, 2010

Who's the queen of kundalini bloopers, Emily Dickinson's attitude problem (that bitch) and California dreams? It's Melissa Broder, who will charm your pants off and then show you a little tough love in this vivid, witty first collection of poems: Each poem is artisan-crafted in controlled couplets, weighty triplets, tight syllabics and assonance that will take the top of your head off. But you won't have time to absorb the academic monkeyshine so absorbed you'll be in the flip side of Bat Mitzvah stress-syndrome, Aunt Sheila's in Taos, vampires in absentia, and brand names, brand names, brand names. From junkie fetishism to a housewife with a special thing for laundry, Broder does dark with magnetic charisma and enchanting humor.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This debut from Broder...is as funny and hip as it is disturbing. Poems with titles like Where Is Your Vampire and Not Quite Ready for the NRA feature jumpy, accessible lines about love and lust in a drug- and media-fueled world...These poems are also quirkily compassionate...sexy, and at times even gross... Throughout, Broder searches for a place to stand, and for an object for her considerable sympathies. This is a bright and unusual debut. --Publisher's Weekly

Lusty, obsessive, and drug-fueled are words not usually used to describe a book of poems but in this case, they apply. Melissa Broder's work offers readers a rush, buzz, panoply of pop culture, as well as her own boisterous brand of dark humor. But be warned: behind the irrepressible excess, an extremely clear-headed and sharp-witted poet is taking notes. Her unique gift for being both grounded and giddy at once gives this writing its delightfully wicked edge. --Elaine Equi, Ripple Effect

Melissa Broder's poems are bad-ass ninja assassins smoking Camel straights and drinking Tab in blood-soaked satin tutus. Her new book is full of tightly-crafted, controlled explosions... "Did you vomit in my shower?" begins a poem, and continues to progress in discoveries. When you think she can't get any wilder, she climbs yet another rung...She speaks in many tongues, and all of them bite. --Jennifer L. Knox, Drunk By Noon

About the Author

Melissa Broder is the curator of the Polestar Poetry Series and the Chief Editor of La Petite Zine. She is the winner of the Jerome Lowell Dejur Award and the Stark Prize for Poetry. Broder received her BA from Tufts University and is currently in the MFA program at the CCNY. By day, she works as a literary publicist. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including: Opium, Shampoo, Conte and The Del Sol Review. She lives in Brooklyn.

Product Details

• Perfect Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Ampersand Books; 1 edition (February 6, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 098410254X
• ISBN-13: 978-0984102549
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,272,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Melissa Broder is the author of WHEN YOU SAY ONE THING BUT MEAN YOUR MOTHER. She blogs at www.melissabroder.com

Broder is the chief editor of La Petite Zine and curates the Polestar Poetry Series. She won the 2009 Stark Prize for Poetry and the 2008 Jerome Lowell Dejur Award.

Broder received her BA from Tufts University and is getting a slow, scenic MFA at CCNY. By day, she is a publicity manager at Penguin.

Her poems appear, or are forthcoming, in many journals, including: Five Dials, Opium, Shampoo, The Del Sol Review, The Promethean and Swink.

She lives in New York City.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars an excellent addition to any bookshelf February 9, 2010

By Rivka

Format:Perfect Paperback

"If I don't stop using/ the word fingerbang/ I'll never get to be poet laureate."

This is decidedly not your mother's poetry. Thank god for that. Full of junkies, Jews, and Johnny Walker, these poems smile at you sweetly with razor blades in their cheeks. But for all the sharp wit and brand names the volume never loses sight of the essential humanity ("You are already forgiven. / You know that, / don't you?"). The underlying weight (but not heaviness) of Broder's excellent debut makes When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother easy to read and reread.

5.0 out of 5 stars Revelry in Moments of Bleakness February 20, 2010

By Laurel Kallen

Format:Perfect Paperback

Melissa Broder's first book of poems, When You Say One Thing but Mean Your Mother, explores the power of human bonding and the desolation of its flip side, isolation. In the title poem, the narrator delves into her own psychological drama as a function of her narcissistic mother's refusal to commit to natural childbirth and to breastfeeding. Similarly, in "Jewish Voodoo," where a mother buys her daughter a "labia mezuzah," Broder reminds us that we come from the womb, but there's no returning thereto. Yet, with a delightful balance between the dark and the heady, the poems provide a sense that revelry in moments of bleakness is always both possible and desirable.

5.0 out of 5 stars A debut poetry collection to devour-- February 8, 2010

By Victoria L. Mccoy

Format:Perfect Paperback

Melissa Broder's debut collection is as playful as it is biting. Turning the pages in this book - and you won't be able to stop turning - is like a kaleidoscope of poetry, each one more colorful, cutting, and mesmerizing than the last. The voice that carries each whirlwind of a poem is unapologetic and wonderfully gritty, leaving you raw by the end of the page. But whether the speaker is dealing with drugs ("You're nobody / 'til some sweet-faced junkie / with a Dixie cup of juice / and methadone loves you / more than his drugs"), self-destruction ("I must stab the heart of my throat / with a toothbrush, dig big / for cemetery belly"), or heartache ("I miss your applesauce. I miss your night sweats"), she is never without tenderness. Grappling with what it means to be a poet, and to grow up female in this culture, Broder is unafraid to stare down her own humanness - the greatest gift a poet can give. Her poetry creates a dizzying, drug-infested, body-image-ridden world that you can't help but want to fix and fall in love with all at once. When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother assures us that poetry can, in fact, still be fun while breaking your heart in the best way.

5.0 out of 5 stars A goody bag for poetry lovers February 7, 2010

By L. Petronella

Format:Perfect Paperback

Melissa Broder's first collection is truly a treat. Her poems are sweet and brightly colored, but still pack the teeth-cracking crunch of hard candies; Broder's sugar is more likely to burn the tongue than to dissolve on it. Her subject matter ranges from Jewish mothers to funny-pathetic New Yorkers to drugs and eating disorders. Especially sharp and affecting are her portraits of the teenage mind; pimpled wretches starve ("put dinner in a locket"), puke, pretend to do drugs, and wander greasily through many of the poems. Formally, Broder's poetry stands out for its playful engagement with sound; the poems luxuriate with full-rhymes and half-rhymes and sounds glancing off of each other; the effect is like an auditory funhouse of mirrors. But it's not all circus-time for grownups in this sexy book, Broder's images, while always entertaining, are serrated with emotion. In one dreamlike poem, Broder imagines time rewinding: "Soon I drop out / of my own poem; / the skull on the wall / reverts into an antelope, its heart / itching for the woods." In "Dear Aging Anarchist," the poem's mode of snarkily shaking its head at newfangled rebel kids shifts into authentic melancholy: "Remember the drug dream you had / in '79, where New York City / got silent sometimes? It died this evening. / Now there is a word for everything." One of Broder's poems has a character with "starlike ache." That phrase, with its gesture towards the gorgeous and the sad, is a quiet, consistent presence beneath the flash and dazzle of this compelling debut.