The Darkness of a Whole Generation Living Without Consolation: A Review of Melissa Broder's When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother

There’s a beautiful tension in Melissa Broder’s poetry — the darkness of a whole generation living without consolation, the humour that refuses to take the first element seriously, the microcosm of personality types living outside their time, and the macro view of an America obsessed with staying now. Sweet wisdom grinds against nasty portraits of adolescent insecurity, old hippies and junkies totter on in a world where brand names are the new great signifiers, all held together by a great satirical bent that can’t help but put its own concerns in the absurd tableau with the rest.

Broder’s eye for the absurd, the ability to find the goofiness in any situation (or, failing that, to make it goofy with just the right word), compelled me to publish her debut collection, When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother. Even the most deeply personal confessions in her poetry are tempered by an inveterate playfulness, a voice that plays with language (good), but also plays with the modern poet’s role of great complainer (even better). Her narrators come across as richly imagined characters, each with a different version of a smirk directed toward her subject, but with a special sensitivity as well.

Some of the finest moments in this collection, however, come when Broder turns her satirical eye to herself, and to the world of poetry itself. For instance, the first few lines of the poem, “Dear Billy Collins,” where Broder pulls off an impeccable impression of the man himself:

“If I don’t stop using

the word fingerbang

I’ll never get to be

poet laureate.”