Human Rights

Literature & Fiction

Lease, Joseph

Poetry

Zoland Books

“Poems as cool as they are passionate, as soft-spoken as they are indignant, and as fiercely Romantic as they are formally contained. . . . An exquisite collection!”—Marjorie Perloff
With musical grace critics have likened to that of Robert Creeley, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Carlos Williams, Joseph Lease mixes a storyteller’s rhythm with lyric beauty to create a collection filled with humor, political bite, and psychological intensity. In a country where “money has won everywhere,” but the essential promise of democracy still beckons, these poems uncover our troubled psyches and show us what it might mean to be “Free Again.”

Broken World

Coffee House Press

"I regard Lease as the best poet of his generation. This is a poetry filled with stories that are built to last. This is a poet who will become a major voice in American poetry."David Shapiro
With singular grace and musicality, these accomplished poems summon the voices of a divided country. With a storyteller’s rhythm, Lease braids humor, political bite, psychological intensity, and lyric beauty, taking us to a place of warning, critique, and elegy.
Joseph Lease is the author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry: Broken World, Human Rights, and The Room. His poems have also been featured on NPR and published in Bay Poetics, The AGNI 30th Anniversary Poetry Anthology, VQR, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Lease's poem "'Broken World' (For James Assatly)" appeared in The Best American Poetry, edited by Robert Creeley and David Lehman.

Testify

"Promise me the rich can’t sleep," Joseph Lease begs in The Body Ghost, offering poems as light on the page as nursery rhymes, and as powerful as prayer. Here, verse conjures up the body in pain, the body politic in collapse, and the tensile strength of the filaments that connect us.

The Body Ghost

Poetry. "I regard Joseph Lease as the best poet of his generation. This is a poetry filled with stories that are built to last. This is a poet who will become a major voice in American poetry."—David Shapiro"HUMAN RIGHTS is a remarkable accomplishment, telling a complex story of human rites and their often painful authority with a range of resources any poet would be blessed to command. This singular book marks the beginning of what promises to be in all senses a brilliant career."—Robert Creeley

Jensen/Daniels

BRAND NEW softcover, clean text, solid binding, NO remainders NOT ex-library slight shelfwear / storage-wear; WE SHIP FAST. Carefully packed and quickly sent. 201601881 First books of poetry are sometimes marked by hesitancy and indirection; this one is not. Instead, Lease introduces a curiously powerful voice and establishes a singular style in work that ranges from stark syllabic poems reminiscent of the Black Mountain school, to others rich in surrealistic images, to discursive prose poems. Lease wields primal images to mirror a desolate subjective world: ``The lead sun. / Snow falling straight down / On graphite-colored water, / Yellow slick leaves, concrete.'' The evocative title poem, about the impending loss of a relationship, juxtaposes casual--even confessional--prose poems, formal quatrains, single-line stanzas, and images such as ``I have eight legs and an exoskeleton, / my eyes are livid taupe, and in each mandible I hold a tiny, scream / ing baby.'' Other prose poems capture the momentary blur between natural world and inner perception, as when ``my hands breathe new tightening inside the branch.'' Lease's voice weakens only when the sensual images become predictable--``I breathe like an oak tree / I taste your sweating skin''--or when overloaded images are more precious than precise. But Lease more often rewards readers by allowing them a memorable glimpse into the painful yet intelligible realm of loss and poetry itself. We recommend selecting Priority Mail wherever available. (No shipping to Mexico, Brazil or Italy.) 3

The Room (Alef Series of Poetry and Verse Translation : 2)

ALEF Books

Fire Season

Chax Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lease, Joseph. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lease, Joseph

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lease, Joseph. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Human Rights

Broken World

Testify

The Body Ghost

Human Rights

The Room (Alef Series of Poetry and Verse Translation : 2)

Fire Season