About the Book:

“One subject of Lee Busby’s poetry is love: careless love, love done and gone, blood-deep love of place, love of the gods of song and verse, the anchoring love of true friendship, the healthy love we glibly categorize as self-esteem. All these, in his first collection 5th Generation Immigrant, go a long way towards kindness and care, through a troubling, troubled voice free of postured affirmation and open to such doubts that are prerequisites to faith. And all these are governed by humor and authenticated by a conversational idiom lifted at points by stunning imagery to a visionary intensity. The reader will know far more about poetry and the world after reading this remarkable collection.” —William Olsen

“Lee Busby’s debut collection is a book of sly self-reckonings, where whimsy almost invariably gives way to pathos. Whether he is writing of pop culture or high culture, in autobiographical lyrics or through the point of view of an engaging alter ego called Blackbird, his poems remind us that to successfully praise the quotidian—without glibness or solipsism—is a hard-won skill. But Busby possesses that skill in abundance, and this makes for a first collection of considerable promise, and an equally noteworthy depth of character.” —David Wojahn

Take a closer look at 5th Generation Immigrant in our Behind the Titles review here.