“Both wry and ardent, Intrusive Beauty is an immensely accomplished book. Readers have all the pleasure of great poetry here—nuanced syntax, a musician’s harmonious ear, and a remarkably deft and varied handling of form… Nothing is precious here—even the poems about fatherhood and nature, those baited traps, are leapt over by Capista’s nimble speaker.”
—Beth Ann Fennelly, Poet Laureate of Mississippi
“In his beautifully crafted first book, Joseph J. Capista never loses focus: on sound, on theme, on formal shapeliness. Always, he writes in the gravity of saying something of human importance. He knows the strengths of limitation and the wisdom of the struggle. He knows what to withhold and what to show, but he shines most when he breaks out of the mold and writes a poetry of pure apprehension. Poems like ‘Devotional of Daily Apprehension,’ ‘Notes for the Next God,’ and ‘Composition’ are vital articulations of wonder.”
—Rodney Jones
“The title of this debut perfectly describes what you’ll find inside: unsettling and beautiful poems that understand what’s hard, what’s gentle, what’s dangerous and what might be saving in human experience. Some zoom in with luminous precision on jellyfish or osprey; another has the poet attending a Vigilante Day parade with group home residents, and becomes a strange, upsetting, invigorating document of a scene that ends ‘We came today expecting outlaws./We came expecting justice.’ Come to Intrusive Beauty expecting a slant and rich kind of clarity.”
—Daisy Fried
