Sample Poems

“The earth is not love” writes Gary Leising, and yet in poem after poem, in this, his most welcome debut collection, The Alp at the End of My Street, he is able to achieve that sweet mutability that the best poems do so well: to vividly confirm the blood and funk of our brute human enterprise and yet, in so doing, discover love: delightful, truthful, redemptive, outrageous, witty, and unexpectedly hopeful.  We trust this voice for its maturity, intelligence and indefatigable curiosity. 

—Kwame Dawes, author of Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected Poems

The alp at the end of Gary Leising’s street is many things but to me it embodies the immensity of life’s surprising spiritual eruptions, doubts, and challenges amid the mundane.  The Alp at the End of My Street is
full of happily disconcerting shifts between humor and high seriousness, and it is rich with daring but agreeable leaps of imagination that surprise and delight.  The author’s intelligence, good humor, and
common sense light up every poem in this outstanding collection.  

—Andrew Hudgins, author of American Rendering: New and Selected Poems