Joseph Lease.  Broken World.

The gorgeous, masterful work in Joseph Lease’s new book of poetry, Broken World, (Coffee House Press, 2007) is deeply political, painfully human and visionary. Its importance for our world can not be over-emphasized.

The book is organized in two parts. The first section is a grouping of individual poems including the title poem. The second section is a series of poems, each with the same title, called Free Again. But the book also reads as one total piece with themes and language throughout that echo and elaborate on themselves.

There is something in Lease that understands that artistic and spiritual inspiration and exploration is a natural part of everyone and belongs to everyone. His work encourages us to connect with, believe and value these parts of ourselves, especially in the midst of worldwide brutality and economic inequality:

from Free Again:

I can’t make something out of nothing: Holiday Inn sign,
Independent Taxi—there are no symbols, no open roses hanging
down to the grass—shadow and wind, blue-gray car, bright red
car—there are no symbols, no spells—and water was my dirty name:
I’m just trying to make a night or a cathedral or a pine—why don’t
people talk more about corporations and power—I’m just trying
to make mid-summer night—

Lease does not deny his own emotional, cultural, family and class struggles. He moves through his often-present, harsh self-criticism and transforms it:

from Soul-Making:

Let my soul be a sphere, let devotion move my soul. I think
a sparrow might be a picture of death. I think I should make fun
of myself—

from Free Again:


Outside the syllables, outside the grant proposal, I’m a cracking song,
a blighted meadow—


Lease engages the United States government, public and the culture of selfishness and money with his poetry, offering something to Americans worth valuing: a true shamanic exploration toward brighter futures and our best possibilities:

from Free Again:


the self that wins and wins—American self, sleepy self—after night rain,
sun pour through these chants—

and then:

strip malls equal temples or clouds that drift to the words we can’t speak—


Ecstatic, pioneering harmonies of contemporary and archetypal language make up this work:

from Free Again:

what have you seen—I can’t answer—anything—these walls—holy garbage—
words and power and blinking lights—pieces of mirror sweep the
word: each step jiggles pink buildings—the Americans are here,
drunk on their own naughtiness—

and Lease’s beautiful lyricism is a rare enchantment:

from Free Again:

if anybody needs a branch in light,
if anybody needs the lake’s glass skin—

from “Broken World” (for James Assatly):

faith and rain
brightness falls

blank as glass
brightness falls

Joseph Lease’s Broken World encourages us to admit, identify and communicate about the problems of our American society and world so that we can envision something beyond the “community of headlines, community of video loops.” It is a chronicle of social, mystical and psychological struggle and transformation. Toward the end of Free Again, Lease asks:

Who are your senses—who is your darkness—who is your wilderness—