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"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.