PRAISE

“This debut from Broder…is as funny and hip as it is disturbing…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.”
–Publishers Weekly

“…obsessive, energetic and pop-culture-infused poetry…”
–Time Out New York

“…Melissa Broder performs a kind of literary augury few poets have the stamina for…The muscular, resilient, compassionate force behind When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother characterizes a new generation of poets who have cast off the safety net of simple repartée…The result in this volume of poems is an inventive, restless ricochet between a cultural psyche at war with what it has been taught to idealize, and its bullshit-sensitive belly-mind. Broder’s insight and honesty will make your brain light up and your hair stand on end.”
–The San Francisco Examiner

“Broder’s verse is acrobatic and whip-smart…its own creature. A fit and noisy body, it steamrolls through crises with the sugar and swing typically associated with the likes of The Shangri-Las and Ramones. These poems go on gut rhythm and beg for exclamation in a crowded room rather than the mute restraint of the printed page. And that’s a good thing too.”
–Bomb

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.
–American Book Review

“…an energetic dissection of contemporary American life…Broder’s observations on the meaning and nonsense of pop culture are penetrating and illuminating…a vibrant and eclectic collection.”
–PANK

“Melissa Broder shows major chops. Here is a poet with a gift of gaze, able to look long and hard and deep at the world…churning near-perfect lines out of her observations…in a narrative voice that is charming, disarming, and instantly addictive…The world of this book is real world, profoundly felt…she’s infused something sparkling and super-charged into the seemingly banal—which is maybe a decent definition for art. Broder can work with anything—from the Dixie cups at the methadone clinic to pots of chicken soup…a major statement from a poet with skill and soul.”
–decomP

“She’s a gunslinger, staring down reality, taunting it, laughing down its barrel….[Broder] could breathe new life into the world of poetry, taking the proverbial stick out of the ass of modern literature.”
–Notes & Gracenotes

“…evokes Portnoy’s Complaint and Woody Allen and generally just sticks in your head…”
–Tablet

FROM THE POETS

“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

“Broder surveys the public and private landscapes of America in this sticky, syrupy late night breakfast of contemporary culture— “it smells of sloppy joe and strawberry Charleston Chew.”  Everything you love and hate about consumer culture and the media is in this book…”

—Matthew Rohrer, Rise Up

“Melissa Broder’s ebullient, essayistic poems pay attention to sounds and sense, rousing tunes out of Duane Reades and words like “unhitchery” equally. She addresses her poems to a world of non-poetic people who might find themselves in her poems: people with acne, teenage waifs, and aging anarchists alike. They are cosmopolitan in a playful kind of way. They’re super poems.”

—Daniel Nester, How to Be Inappropriate

“Whether she is writing about the baggage borne by modern romance, spitting out peyote buttons, or declaring “you have mixed feelings about suicide prevention,” Melissa Broder speaks with tart charm and arresting detail of a generation figuring out how and what to love. Her poems are droll, edgy, a little on edge, and deftly poetic. Even when they speak out of the side of their mouth, under their breath they are wonderfully, and subversively, moral.”

—David Groff, Theory of Devolution

INTERVIEWS

Ploughshares
vomit is holy

Redivider
fleshiness, disreality, white light

Best American Poetry blog
“If you find yourself jaded about the poetry scene in particular and the writerly scene in general…you are hereby directed to place yourself in the presence of Melissa Broder.”

Galleycat/Media Bistro
Shillin’ fo’ the shiller

Better TV
Talking about poetry, Gossip Girl and Belle and Sebastian

PANK
Textual constraints and patty melts

Jewcy
Talking about lit w/ Rachel Shukert and Naomi Firestone

Dale Radio
I am obsessed with this man

Bees Knees
The lovely Nicelle Davis interviews me about ‘fingerbang’

Jewish Book Council
A guest-blogging stint involving famous Jews you went to Hebrew School with, Hassidic exchange students and a Lenny Bruce cover.

Tufts Daily interview
Alma mater represent!

Book Bound
Main Line represent!

Blend Radio
You turn me on I’m a radio…I’m a little bit corny.

MAD PROPS AND LIL’ PROPS

The San Francisco Examiner
California Love

Bomb
White-pony gallop

Annalemma
Opulence

decomP
I love you.

PANK
The Ampersand canon.

SF Weekly
The Dead are dead

Dossier Journal
Street cred!

AM New York
Polestar page 22.

AM New York
Coolin’ out on the xmas list

Jewish Exponent
Mazel tov.

Tufts Daily review
Jumbo love.

Jewish Book World
Mazel.

SNARK

Gawker
“Broder’s publicist’s future book will be called ‘Banana Karenina Sings the Blueberries, Or: The Indubitably Odd Presidency of Cherry True-Man.’”

New York Times
“On Friday afternoon, four young publicists from Tor Books were spotted in a corner trying to get one of them, Melissa Broder, into an 8-foot-tall hot-dog costume…”