Leprosarium: Poems

Poetry. When the manuscript that became Lise Goett’s new book LEPROSARIUM was chosen for the Winner Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America, judge Toi Derricotte’s citation said, This is dangerous art, as serious as a heart attack, unsparing mostly of the poet herself, and as intensely rewarding as it is unsettling. Goett’s poetry, infused with a bountiful vocabulary, is rife with extravagantly dramatic forms that take in the sweep of western art and religion via relationships between those with power and those who’ve suffered their commands. Luminous, symphonic, and suffused with mystical awareness…–Carolyn Forche

A book of intellectual drive and irrefutable grace in poems that wrestle with humanity’s stewardship or annihilation of all that is wild and passionate at the core of existence.–Roberto Tejada

…an amazingly sustained book.–Richard Howard

…an impassioned chatelaine of sound…Drawn to defiance and disavowal as much as to ecstasy and devotion…What a consistently astute, lush, and startling collection!–Cyrus Cassell