Broken World

Joseph Lease reads a selection of poems from his collection Broken World. (Running Time: 10:11)

• This text will be replaced

Of Broken World Marjorie Perloff wrote: "The poems in Joseph Lease's Broken World are as cool as they are passionate, as soft-spoken as they are indignant, and as fiercely Romantic as they are formally contained. Whether writing an elegy for a friend who died of AIDS or playing complex variations on Rilke's Duino Elegies ("If I cried out, / Who among the angelic orders would / Slap my face, who would steal my / Lunch money"), Lease has complete command of his poetic materials. His poems are spellbinding in their terse and ironic authority: Yes, the reader feels when s/he has finished, this is how it was -- and how it is. An exquisite collection!"

About the Author:

Joseph Lease: Joseph Lease is the author of two critically acclaimed collections of poetry: Human Rights (Zoland Books) and The Room. 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 (Coffee House Press) 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 Arts in San Francisco.