So Where Are We?: Poems

By Lawrence Joseph

“So where are we?” asks Lawrence Joseph in the title poem of his powerful and moving sixth book of poetry. Beginning where his acclaimed collection Into It left off, amid the worldwide violence unleashed by the World Trade Center terrorist attack, 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, and “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, intelligence, emotional force, and fierce, uncompromising vision, Joseph speaks from deep within the truths of poetry’s common language. So Where Are We? is extraordinary new work from one of our most distinctive poets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Aug 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9780374717186

Lawrence Joseph

Lawrence Joseph, the grandson of Lebanese and Syrian Catholic immigrants, was born and raised in Detroit. A graduate of the University of Michigan, University of Cambridge, and University of Michigan Law School, he is the author of several books of poetry, including So Where Are We?, and of the books of prose, Lawyerland, a non-fiction novel, and The Game Changed: Essays and Other Prose. He is the Tinnelly Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law and has also taught creative writing at Princeton. He lives in New York City.

Book preview

A FABLE

Great bronze doors of Trinity Church, hours

told by the sounds of bells. A red

tugboat pushes a red and gold barge

into the Narrows. A bench in the shadows

on a pier in the Hudson. The café

on Cornelia Street, the music,

now whose voice might that be? Diffuse,

invisible, energy. The flow of data

since the attacks has surged.

Technocapital, permanently, digitally,

semioticized, virtually unlimited

in freedom and power, taking

billions of bodies on the planet

with it. Future, past, cosmogonies,

the void, are in whose vision?

Ever-deepening, ravenous

cruelty, viciousness, annihilation,

defended and worshipped.

But is there a more beautiful city—parts

of it, anyway? Another path to the harbor,

the border between sea and land

fluctuating, a line, a curve. Peck Slip

to Water Street to Front Street

to Pine, to Coenties Slip to Pearl

to Stone Street to Exchange Place,

the light in majestic degrees.

This is a fable. A final nail

driven in. The Recording Angel

completes the exactest chronicle.

Blake, with blazing eyes, loves

issues of eternal time. Gauguin

puts a final green on the

Reviews for So Where Are We?

[bearlyr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Deep, dark, thought provoking poetry. This is a great collection, but should be avoided if you're looking for peaceful light prose. This is a realistic poetic look at the current human political microcosm, portrayed in inter-connected poems. Illuminating albeit a bit depressing... Which describes the current earthly culture rather well.