Additional information
by Lawrence Joseph (Author)
A new, impassioned, ultracontemporary collection from "one of our most acute poetic chroniclers" (The New York Times).
Precisely Now unspools against the backdrop of a transmogrified Lower Manhattan, one built back after 9/11, yet where buildings on Wall Street remain pockmarked from anarchist bombings of the 1920s. Out on the very tip of the island, where "moods are painted blue on the blue East River," on the streets where Federico García Lorca walked on his American tour, where Herman Melville was born, and where emblems of American avarice burn bright, we find the poet seeking to transform what he sees, thinks, and feels into a simple and timeless language describing the present as it happens. With an incisive intelligence, a pervading dignity, and keen sense of humanity and beauty, Joseph writes unsparingly of the detritus of the Trump presidency, the sins of our nation, the horrors of genocide, and the decline of the body. Challenging, direct, morally focused, fierce in intensity, ultracontemporary yet beating with a sensuous intimacy that has at its core an abiding love, Precisely Now presents a vision as bold and impassioned as any in American poetry.Author Biography
Lawrence Joseph was born and raised in Detroit, the grandson of Lebanese and Syrian Catholic immigrants. A graduate of the University of Michigan, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Michigan Law School, he is the author of many books of poetry, most recently A Certain Clarity: Selected Poems, and two books of prose: Lawyerland, a nonfiction 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 taught creative writing at Princeton. He lives in New York City.
Number of Pages: 96
Dimensions: 0.4 x 8.1 x 5.3 IN
Publication Date: September 15, 2026
