PRAISE FOR ANATOMY OF WANT

“In Anatomy of Want, hunting musk and tales of slumber drunk-dial themselves into poetry through the imagination of Daniel Lee. This is a remarkable first book, a set of hymns, a set of prayers in installments from the young poet’s mouth to the ears of the reader, the precariously beloved, an eavesdropping divinity.”
—Scott Hightower, Part of the Bargain

“Daniel Lee’s meticulously crafted poems are, at once, both sultry and elegant. In Anatomy of Want, he charts the trajectories of fulfilled and unfulfilled desires – exploring, along the way, how carnal and spiritual appetites can inform, infuse, and interrogate each other. The book abounds with questions. Some are set in the haunting refrains of ghazals; some playfully presented as a multiple-choice pop quiz. Glowing with wit, insight, and sensuality, this book is sure to make you hungry for more of Daniel’s work.”
—Elaine Equi, Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems

“To be ‘left without’ or to be ‘left desiring’ unlocks the double-edged ‘wanting’ that these poems caress, dissect, flay. Daniel Lee straddles a wide range of rhetorical traditions all the way from Bible to ghazal to the erotocidal. His poems wrestle and flirt, their winged flights of fancy untimely clipped, hitting the ground hard before getting right back up.”
—Timothy Liu, Of Thee I Sing

“Letters sometimes arrive in bits and pieces, secrets unfold over the course of a relationship, understood over the course of a life. Sometimes a talkative person manages to fish out information by seeming to share their own. That is what it is like reading these poems by Daniel W.K. Lee. From the complaints of Lucifer about Gabriel’s arrogance to a playful-but-serious Brazilian jujitsu match between friends, the speakers in this book demand their own due—that their desires and deliriums be taken seriously by God and man.”
—Kazim Ali, Inquisition

“Daniel’s poems mesmerize and engage in revelatory ways. Sexy and profound, this significant debut is a heartfelt contribution to contemporary poetry. An essential new voice worth celebrating.”
—Emanuel Xavier, Pier Queen

"Daniel Lee's work wrestles with desire, melancholy, family and belonging. His work celebrates the beauty and limits of language with blood-stirring sensuality and lyricism. His use of non-Western classical forms shows the universality of the human need for poetry and makes a dazzling juxtaposition with his evocative use of English.”
—Annapurna Potluri Schreiber, The Grammarian

“Daniel Lee’s new book of poetry, Anatomy of Want employs a masterful command of language that weaves allusions to his Chinese family, love, sex & the body. Scaling the nature of desire and longing, Lee’s poems offer moments of reversal and emotional intricacy that are by turns playful, intellectually engaging, formally challenging and deeply pleasurable. His articulation of emptiness made me sad about life but excited and hopeful, too. A remarkable debut.”
—Tomas Mournian, hidden

“Daniel Lee's debut collection is a much needed breath of fresh air on the brow of a world going mad with fever. His verse are songs of testimony, history, and bittersweet storytelling. I am proud to see his poems brought together in these beautiful pages. All hail Daniel, the new prince of lyricism! Rise here and rest in his words!”
—Shane Allison, Slut Machine