Suzanne Buffam
The Irrationalist



Suzanne Buffam’s first book, Past Imperfect, was published in 2005 by House of Anansi Press. The Irrationalist, her second book, was published in the U.S. by Canarium Books and in Canada by House of Anansi Press in April 2010. She’s the recipient of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the CBC Literary Award for Poetry, and her poems have appeared in Boston Review, A Public Space, jubilat, Poetry, and many other journals. She lives in Chicago.

Click here to order The Irrationalist or our other titles.

Click here to read Suzanne's poems at the Poetry Foundation archive.

“Buffam’s often deadpan tone is like a magical dustpan that sweeps up the strangest observations and ideas, all worlds to themselves. Her ‘Little Commentaries’—‘On Piñatas,’ ‘On Fountains,’ and ‘On Vanishing Acts’ (to name only a few)—are absolute gems, kin to Anne Carson’s town poems and Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit. Buffam’s poems tug at new corners of the brain. They’re marvelous.”
- Matthea Harvey

“Buffam begins with a world that ends, a world that is always ending. This is not despair, but a shrewd mind behind an honest eye that in wry observation creates out of small poems a book of knowledge, ‘Little Commentaries,’ which show there is no wisdom unsharpened by wounding wit. That motion is an essential motion, and these are essential poems.”
- Dan Beachy-Quick

“These poems try to achieve something almost impossible: not to betray the ironic today while celebrating the interiority of a serious meditation. And they succeed in doing it. What a treat!”
- Adam Zagajewski


Click here for a review of The Irrationalist at Publishers Weekly.

Click here for one of Suzanne’s poems at Boston Review.

Click here for one of Suzanne’s poems at A Public Space.