Full Early Reviews of ELEMENTAL NATURES by Lance Lee

ELEMENTAL NATURES is my new selected poetry, just out from iUniverse, self-published by choice so I could bring together the work I wanted in such an undertaking, including the essay, The American Voice, here-to-fore only available through an online posting of Agenda in the UK. The book blends selected lyrics, sequences, new poems, artwork by a number of US and UK artists, a re-imagining of the end of the Odyssey, "No One Comes For Penelope— ", and the essay on American poetry taking a distinctly non-academic view of its essence.

The book can be purchased in the US and UK, although UK readers should purchase it from the US through Amazon.co.uk to get the proper price: the reseller in the UK has too inflated prices.

Early reviews have just begun to come in: here is the one from Booklife, the division of Publishers Weekly that reviews self-published work:

Lee (Homecomings) unites a selection of work from “old favorites” and poems he feels he has “neglected” in this cohesive and lyrical collection. Classic themes—such as love, pain and suffering, and religion—unfold amid vivid word imagery and profound symbolism, enveloping readers in a mix of “self and other, just as the present mixes with the past and any number of hoped-for futures.” Lee provides glimpses of a writer at work through the filter of time in this massive tome, packing a multitude of meaning into dramatic inflection and phrasing while challenging readers to open the wounds caused by being human. 

Lee’s collected work shares elements of intensity and raw human experiences, from the powerful imagery of fixating on breast cancer scars during lovemaking in “Backrub,” to the merciless hard labor sentences of immigrants in “The Way Home.” He divulges his discovery of “how blood waters the earth/ how flesh is food and death” and reveals penetrating feelings of isolation and loneliness, making the selected writings read like a fragmented biography told through scenes of the author’s life. “Homecoming” presents as an homage to finding purpose through love - “I am caught in the hall of mirrors husband and wife become/ bound to the urban streetweb where only earthquakes/ remind us the world is real... here is my ocean, fog, light; my stone, my earth, my self/ my flight.”

Though the sheer amount of work presented causes feelings of repetition, Lee’s stunning writing about the natural world and bold descriptions of collective and fundamental experiences is enough to keep readers returning for more. Occasional black-and-white illustrations contextualize the works. Both returning and new readers will savor Lee’s compilation of work in various formats. This compendium will appeal to those who enjoy classic literature as well as poetry about archetypal themes.

Takeaway: This impressive collection organically mixes poetry, prose, and nonfiction and will appeal to thoughtful readers of classic literature and 20th-century verse.

Additionally, a number of writers have offered their initial reactions:

Lance Lee's Elemental Natures draws together in one inspiring new volume a powerful selection of works, including a modern classic, No One Comes for Penelope—; Heartsongs, a medley of striking new poems; and the bold, incisive essay, "The American Voice." These attest to the far-reaching intelligence and perceptive insights of a remarkable talent— from Lance Lee's respect for the classical tradition to the vigor of all-consuming human love to the welfare of planet earth as well as our common awesome as well as awful experiences. In living with these works, I could not help coming away with a sense of poetic maturity and mastery.

     Tom Tolnay, editor/publisher, Birch Brook Press, US

Elemental Natures draws from a career spread over thirty years, visionary and featuring figures such as Dante, Walt Whitman and Rembrandt, including a striking version of the Actaeon story. Heartsongs, the new work included, bewails our planet's peril, celebrates animal life and contrasts it with our inhumanity. Our complexities and place in the world are central in his work, while Late Spring brings his difficult father marvelously to life as Lee investigates himself, his family, and mixed gentile and Jewish background.  Here is a poet writing with the richness of the Romantics who looks hard at reality and expresses himself with passion and honesty, pulling the reader in.

     Myra Schneider, Lifting The Sky, UK

Elemental Natures is a beautiful accomplishment, an expanse of poems born of one man’s ‘life-wish’ --unsettling, full-blooded, tender -- that shows life’s energy pressing up against the margins of mortality with a vibrant, sensuous intelligence which, despite any cruel difficulties rupturing his personal or cultural vision, continues to declare “ Life… more adamant than death.” Lee has always been one of America’s most intelligent and powerful poets of devotion, of love that  "makes one man from my many selves.” He offers a way to share and celebrate multiple aspects of being alive within the vitality of art itself as well as within our great archetypal myths which he makes uniquely intimate and essential. 

     Pamela Stewart, Infrequent Mysteries, US

Stay turned for later posts as ELEMENTAL NATURES reaches a wider audience...