Selected Reviews
The New York Times
“...fearful, funny and bracingly intelligent....”
The Best Poetry of 2016
The Globe and Mail
“...one of the most finely controlled, subtly structured books of Canadian poetry in recent memory.”
Review: New poetry collections from Suzanne Buffam and Adrienne Gruber
The Millions
“…smart, unpretentious, unclassifiable…”
A Year in Reading: Danielle Dutton
The Boston Globe
"Buffam gets at the awareness of the shifting shape of the moon, of hours passing, of life passing.”
Poetically rendered meditation on sleeplessness
The Walrus
“…dark and beautiful and laugh-out-loud funny.”
The Best Books of 2016
The Walrus
“Buffam balances her heavily-researched, fact-laden text with a stand-up comic’s skill for timing.”
Motherhood Consumes the Poet
Publishers Weekly
"Insomniacs and the well-rested alike will feel a kinship as Buffam’s rambling nights coalesce into a beautifully contemplative, deeply personal work."
Review: A Pillow Book
The Kenyon Review
“Funny and illuminating, quirky and devastating Buffam’s A Pillow Book wrestles with the ancient symmetry between sleep and death in the darkness of the ancient night... Keep this book, for its comforts and despairs, right by your bed.”
April Micro-Review
Arc
“Buffam’s writing is as intimate as handwritten notes kept inside one’s pillow.
The Poetry of the Pillow: Suzanne Buffam's A Pillow Book
Geist
“… instead of measuring out her life in coffee spoons, Buffam counts the pillows that mark her days...a quiet and lyrical celebration of the anxieties of life and motherhood.”
Review: A Pillow Book by Suzanne Buffam
The Volta
"Phrases, images, and forms reverberate. As a testament to A Pillow Book’s urgent yet suspended energy, I return to it. I can’t say goodnight."
In Review
The Colorado Review
“Buffam’s syntax, imbued with whimsical precision, reflects her attitude toward her disorder: it should be observed through a tragicomic lens––equal parts sympathy and yest.”
A Pillow Book Reviewed By Scott Woodsman
Literary Matters
“…crowning all these layers, a powerful lyricism extends its atmospheric arc over the whole. The prose patches are not just journal entries and kvetches. They are prose poems, cunningly constructed with the verbal economies and symbolic vibrations of any good poem.”
Two Spells: Buffam and Levis
The Spokesman Review
“…explores the boundaries between poetry and nonfiction while also asking us to think about the intersections between domesticity, power and creativity.”
Turning the page on 2016: Local readers and writers share their favorite books of last year
Matrix
“Contemplative and funny….a perfect homage to Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book.”
BOOK REVIEW: A Pillow Book
