The Ones Within
by Sean Lause
52 poems ~ 70 pages
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-93-90202-68-3
Publisher: Cyberwit
To Order: Amazon


ABOUT THE BOOK:


In these poems we admire the poet’s delicate touch and the felicity of expression. The
poet shows great imaginative power. The flowing ease of expression confirms the fact
that the style of these poems has an impressive spontaneity.


ADVANCE PRAISE:


The power of Sean Lause’s poetic voice comes from his well-crafted and measured lines
which detail the kinds of episodic moments easy for most of us to overlook. Lause’s
attention to these moments enriches them by allowing his readers the opportunity to
experience such episodes in newer, more meaningful ways.
—Jacob King is Assistant Professor of English, Rhodes State College.

Sean Lause’s latest poetry collection, The Ones Within, stands out because of its range,
power and virtuosity. These poems do not back down from difficult observations and
mesh together a vision that encompasses closely observed nature poems, ambiguous
memories of a difficult blue-collar childhood in a rustbelt city, and social and political
insight into the forces that render America hurtful and petty on one hand and capable of
vast sympathy on the other. Poem after poem displays an uncanny gift for startling and
apt metaphor, whether depicting a child lifting worms off the sidewalk with a stick to turn
them into smiles or Robert Lowell menaced by the appliance department of Sears. The
final section arcs from a remembered past to a dismembered present which includes
Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and “Disease in the air/And masks. You can’t tell/the
robbers from the robbed.” This volume is an anthem for our times.
—William Wells is a retired English professor from Rhodes State College and
author of Odd Lots, Scraps & Second-hand, Like New (Grayson Books, 2017).


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Sean Lause is a professor of English at Rhodes State College, Lima, Ohio, United States.
His poems have appeared in Taj Mahal Review, The Minnesota Review, The Alaska
Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, European Judaism, The Beloit Poetry Journal,
Illuminations and Poetry International. He has published two books of poems, Bestiary of
Souls (FutureCycle Press, 2013) and Wakeful Fathers and Dreaming Sons (Orchard
Street Press, 2018). His work has received five Pushcart Prize nominations.


FROM THE BOOK:


Kaleidoscope Boy
by Sean Lause

First he took the wound of names
and wound them round a dawn.
He gathered light in his palms,
then spilled it free in mirrors,
knitting his secret flowers into song.
This was the only way he knew
to grow into the world, weaving
himself to earth like its shadow,
casting to each object an image
of what it once was, or might be.
He turned blood to rubies, eyes
to planets and moons, and burst
the sun to a psalm of iridescence,
making music visible, and darkness
sing a prophesy of dance.
When his captors tried to follow him,
he led them down a labyrinth
scattered with bluebirds and diamonds.
Then he turned himself so rich and
strange he faded into stars.

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