Ley Lines

Joe William's Ley Lines is a gorgeous blend of heartbreak, self-realization, and grief. Joe uses visceral images to connect the reader to his experience growing up with a complex relationship with religion, family dynamics, and living in rural Idaho. This raw collection reveals vulnerability processing the complex dichotomy of hope and realism. Through this work, Joe is unafraid of calling out toxic masculinity. He relentlessly exposes the reader to the dark grittiness that he has been exposed to through enthralling lyrical lines imbued with intense emotional impact. Ultimately, the collection leaves a sense of longing for hope and a lingering desire for resolution. This resolution is viewed with caution as the poet writes through processing his pain to move on to new self-shaping experiences. - Sarah Rooney, author of Mother MediaJoe writes with an aching and purposeful reminiscence, like a soup of memory that's been simmering for decades, now brought to a devastating boil, his poems bubbling over with richly crafted imagery. Never less than ruthlessly honest, these poems are inextricably woven into a complex aroma of tragedy, heartache, and hope.- Brandon T. Sullivan, author of Love and Toxic Waste¿Looking into a mirror and seeing the good and evil of one's soul laid bare for judgment is the kind of experience that Ley Lines would be if not a poetry book. Joe Williams' intimate collection moves through themes of lost innocence, deconstruction, and the yearning for love and acceptance that never seems to shake after one's youth. If poetry is how we confront our demons, Williams' poems "have begun kneading them like clay / forming them and shaping them into something of ornate / originality." The reader is invited to come of age once more under the protective embrace of these poems, at once tender and stinging, a balm on festering wounds that Williams exposes to air and light. In Ley Lines, poetry is not just a high-minded pursuit, but a holy struggle that leaves both reader and author "drowned out in this symphony of violence ... yet ... still breathing."- Asyia Gover, author of East Side SolitudeIn his debut collection, Joseph explores the pain and violence of his childhood, a war torn adolescence, and intimacy while searching for a path forward in all the aftermath. Devastating and simultaneously hopeful, he find himself still breathing, looking beyond the chaos and the darkness to a future yet to be known.