Poet Joseph Lease, Tuesday, April 12th

Joseph Lease’s critically acclaimed books of poetry include Broken World and Human Rights. His work has been featured on NPR and published in The AGNI 30th Anniversary Poetry Anthology, VQR, Bay Poetics, Paris Review, and elsewhere. The title poem from Broken World appeared in The Best American Poetry, edited by Robert Creeley and David Lehman. Originally from Chicago, Lease lives in the Bay Area and chairs the MFA Program in Writing at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Praise for Testify:

“In the tragic vein, written at the end of the American experiment, fueled by a desire like all lasting desires continually thwarted, struggling to be born, Testify places itself at the latest hour and era of commodification: ‘my scream is a brand name’––and works to lift language and therefore being and spirit towards a new utterance: ‘past the water’s skin’ ‘body come undone’ to a ‘good old blank page.’ Testify, a great book, places itself at America’s street corner of Origin and Decay. A delicate, tentative lyricism arises full of want, and Lease is its astonished keeper.”

—GILLIAN CONOLEY

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