Episode Details

Readers of Commonweal and beyond will likely recognize Lawrence Joseph, the author of many books of poetry and prose, and whose work has often appeared in the pages of our magazine.

We’re delighted to report that Larry has just published a new collection of poems, entitled Precisely Now. It’s a collection of thirty-two poems, some of which appeared for the first time in Commonweal, that he began shortly after the first election of Donald Trump in 2017 and continued writing right up to the present.

They are poems of linguistic compression and colloquial precision that, as our literary critic Anthony Domestico puts it, “match anything published in the past half-century in their formal control and moral witness.”

On this episode, senior editor Matthew Boudway talks with Larry Joseph about the

new collection, the poet’s process of composition, and the theology of grace. 

For further reading

• Anthony Domestico reviews Precisely Now

• Lawrence Joseph’s poem entitled ‘Now Light’

• Lawrence Joseph speaks about So Where Are We?