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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.