Spit

In Daniel Lassell’s Spit, we see the leaning faces of barns disappear. There is a relationship between what is sacred and what is empty, between homesickness and the guilt of thinking of any place as one’s own. What I love about this collection is its ability to convey both an adoration of landscape and the violence inherent to the pastoral: “beads of yolk dapple the soil.”—Taneum Bambrick, author of Vantage

Rife with biblical references, Daniel Lassell’s poems suggest that the animal kingdom is distinct, regardless of our claims of preservation, and cannot be governed by humans who lack the capacity to first understand ourselves. The devastation of this collection is in being deftly led through the experiences within its microcosm, only to question the whole of existence. In image after taut image, the terror and magic of life are all.—Chelsea Dingman, author of Through a Small Ghost and Thaw

In this captivating and inventive debut, there’s good humor and plenty of sorrow, a story of recovery and growth, of finding community and healing in a place far away. Daniel Lassell writes beautiful poems with tenderness and care, even when he tells hard truths.—Todd Davis, author of Native Species and Winterkill
 

These poems teach me again that our membership in the practiced knowledge of life and death is equal to its burden of daily chores, the specific transactions of love we choose or don’t, the countless ways we can still return to our places and ourselves. Spit is at once a coming-of-age story and an elegy for that so-called coming-of-age, a necessary guidebook for anyone hoping to go home again.—Rebecca Gayle Howell, author of American Purgatory and Render / An Apocalypse

Daniel Lassell’s arresting and visceral debut smolders with heartache, gritty natural landscapes, and an insistent lyrical beauty that both celebrates and haunts the edges of our familiar world. It is the story of a boy and young man who grows up amid vast yet confining farmlands, llamas, power plants, sunset-blazed wheat, and a family he both cherishes and knows he must flee. And the lessons are hard-learned, whittled into bark like initials separated by a heart. These poems illuminate the complexity, curiosity, and rawness of life in an often-neglected part of America. Spit is a starkly rendered cultural exploration, personal journey, and love letter to the familiarity and the strangeness that compose a “home.”―John Sibley Williams, author of Skin Memory and As One Fire Consumes Another