Into It

A genuinely superb book of poems, in fact one of the most powerful and important books I've read in years. How, especially after 9/11 and the second Iraq war, do each of us confront accelerating domestic and worldwide violence? How do we live in a time since, as Joseph says, "The Game Changed"? How can poetry inform an age of technological revolutions, and social and political changes, on an increasingly global scale? In "Into It," Joseph, with his sharp eye and intellect and verbal skills, shows us how.

The tragedy of September 11, 2001 ignited fear in all of us, the unexpected, the sudden change, the destruction of passivity, and the mourning and, gradually, the healing. Each of the arts has responded to this event in ways that allow tremulous minds to find some semblance of organization out of the chaos: John Adams' composition 'On the Transmigration of Souls' is one example of how artists find ways to make the unbelievable credible, restoring the ability to continue living. Among the poets to respond to 9/11 is Lawrence Joseph who in this slim volume of 61 pages helps us as readers to find the path back to reality. It is as though Joseph first paused at the possibilities of terrorism, witnessed it first hand, and then walked among the rubble to find the cores of each of these strong poems to cry out against societal blindness, political shambles, views of the universe scrambled by that fateful event, and little picas of resilience. He doesn't leave the reader dangling with cosmic angst and anxiety, but instead ends up offering themes of hope. 'Have I mentioned my grandmother/my father's mother, who died long ago/ but who visits me in dreams?/ It's to her, mostly, I owe/ the feeling that, in cases of need,/ those transfigured in eternal love help us/ certainly with eternal,/ and, perhaps, also, with temporal gifts;/ that, in eternal love, all is gratis - / all that comes from eternal love/ is gratis.' This is poetry for healing and for reading repeatedly. Lawrence Joseph has written more than just his fourth volume of fine poems: he has provided a path to Gilead. Grady Harp, September 05