Say Anything poems prose poems

Say Anything finds Lee Rossi in an unexpectedly expansive mood. Over the course of his previous work, we’ve learned to expect the deep, the dark and the dire. There was of course the occasional laugh, but laughter is often close to the surface here, whether he is bemoaning a mythical parent or upbraiding his own penchant for gloom. Whatever the subject or the occasion, Rossi keeps things bright and luminous. Now in his eighth decade, he chooses to ignore the darkness on the horizon and celebrate the oddities and beauties of this marvelous life.

Lee Rossi's collection Say Anything reveals he is a poet constantly questioning his cralt and the larger world in which it exists. From the quotidian to the sublime, these poems explore the vagaries of life which is "something in the fox's mouth, something still alive but just barely.”

-Lynne Thompson

Lee Rossi's previous books (Ghost Diary, Wheelchair Samurai, and Darwin's Garden among them) have been, in part, progressive chroniclings of his life, his dialectic with God, and our common joys & flawed humanity. This new book, Say Anything, takes it further, varying dictions—sometimes Bukowski-esque without the crassness, sometimes riffing on Christopher Smart, sometimes like Creeley in thin, taut lines, still other times in prose poems. Rossi continues his exploration of the self and its foibles inside a new progression—this time, a reckoning with mortality. "Every day the ceiling gets lower," reports the voice in "The Angel Angle." Say Anything is a free-drawn topographical map of a book, a mirror to a man.

-Gerald Fleming

From Publisher’s Weekly: “Readers seeking a spiritual, sophisticated collection will find depth, lightness, and surprising illumination in Rossi’s poetry, ‘whose only motive is joy.’” Read the rest of the review here: BookLife

“The charm and quality of Say Anything and the enjoyment it offers make it easy to recommend.”: Rebecca Patrascu in Pedestal.