Middle Creek
Publishing & Audio

"Broken Light in a Burning Wood betrays a relentlessly discursive pattern of mind. Its shapes are lovely and the reader slides easily into the rapture of its litany, a bright and vivid deluge always humming towards the upper limits of song. It also stands as a staggering inventory of loss and heat, living in the state of being beyond warning. This book reminds me of the best of Bernadette Mayer's sequences, the complete immersion job cracked with an innate musicality. In Alexander Shalom Joseph's work poetry is an elemental trance with an ever expanding vision."

 

—Cedar Sigo, author of Royals and Guarding the Mysteries

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What a thoroughly honest book. Despite the catastrophic fires and uncertain times of our season on earth, Alexander Shalom Joseph has gone off in search of beauty, like John Keats did two hundred years ago. Love moves through these pages on invisible feet. In this work, we find that we can’t hope for beauty without telling some hard, hard truths.

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—Andrew Schelling author of ​Love and the Turning Seasons: India’s Poetry of Erotic & Spiritual Longing

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In Broken Light in a Burning Wood, Joseph looks unflinchingly at the environmental crisis, giving voice to his pain and anger about the state of the world, while also reflecting on the small moments of love and joy that carry him forward and give meaning to his life. While much of the art and conversation focused on climate change is either too bleak or not hard hitting enough, Joseph attempts to strike an honest balance and enter the burning wood with eyes wide open and pen in hand, creating a visceral response to the conditions and environment of these times and a testament to the broken light which still shines in this world.

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—David Anthony Martin, author of Bijoux and The Ground Nest, and others

 

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