So Where Are We?

So where are we? Lawrence Joseph asks in the title poem of his powerful and moving sixth book. Beginning where his acclaimed collection Into It left off, amidst the worldwide violence unleashed by the World Trade Center terrorist attacks, Joseph’s poems—global and historic in scope—boldly encounter the imaginative challenges of our time, issues of political economy, labor and capital, racism and war, addressing "the point at which / violence becomes ontology, / these endless ambitious experiments in destruction, / a species grief." Against these realities, Joseph presents an intimate, sensuous language of beauty and love, "a separate / palette kept for each poem," a constant shifting and fluid play of sound and tone. With incisive intensity and intelligence, and fierce, uncompromising vision, Joseph speaks from deep within the truths of poetry’s common language. So Where Are We? is extraordinary new work by one of our most distinctive poets.