“This is poetry not as an idea but as an experience—evocative of a vast multiplicity of ideas. . . . In the end, the most accurate, and perhaps the most useful, description of Lease’s work is it’s beautiful. Read it.”
—The Rumpus
“Testify is, in a sense, Joseph Lease’s testimony of being an American in America at this precise moment in time. . . . Invoking the language of what is at stake forces us to participate in the discourse surrounding it—and this book tells us that our testimony, like its own, is necessary.”
—New Pages
“There is anger in Testify, and there is love. But unlike Whitman and Thoreau, Lease offers no whiff of redemption, and unlike Jeremiah before them, no consolation. Lease might be on to something.”
—Tablet
“What I also admire in Lease’s book is his attention to the textural shape of each poem. Words find their line as a dancer finds and fills her space. . . .Lease’s testimony rings even more vividly.”
—The Midtown Review
“Testify, a great book, places itself at America’s street corner of Origin and Decay. A delicate, tentative lyricism arises full of want, and Lease is its astonished keeper.”
—Gillian Conoley
“The magic of these poems lies in their careful and insistent repetitions, their powerful cadence, their delicate choosing, their brilliant clarity.”
—Julie Carr
“This is such important work, such consolation—personal and communal. I’ve just sent it to everyone I know.”
—Janet Desaulniers
“Rarely does a book of poetry release universal truths so skillfully and passionately. . . . Lease carries the reader with him as he allows supreme vulnerability to be sung.”
—Jacket2
"This is an important, innovative book that taps into jarring suspensions central to American experience.”
—The Colorado Review
“[Testify] is filled with a clear eye towards our future by reading the tea leaves of our present. . . . Lease appears to be the singular talent able to absorb all of this and focus it into one 66-page beam of poetic truth and beauty. I would testify to that.”
—H_NGM_N
