Poetry by Joseph Fasano, author of Fugue for Other Hands. In this second collection, Fason explores poetry in longer, more detailed forms.

"Joseph Fasano's stunning second collection of poems, Inheritance, offers us poem after poem of fierce beauty and visionary power, work whose subtext is always the vigilance of a restless dialectic, a kind of music that listens, that longs to transfigure suffering without violating its factual heartbreak. The counterpoint here would pitch testament against silence in a great bold fugue where loss connects, shame forgives, bitterness kneels—all as testament to the enormity of who we were, are, and are not yet. 'I've learned this much from music,' he writes, 'If you refuse / music, music will be given to you.' And what music indeed, what gifts. With just his second book, Joseph Fasano is one of the best poets I know."—Bruce Bond

Joseph Fasano is a writer and educator. He studied mathematics and astrophysics at Harvard University before changing his course of study and earning a degree in philosophy, with a focus on philosophy of language after Wittgenstein. He did his graduate study in poetry at Columbia University, working with Mark Strand, Lucie Brock-Broido, Richard Howard, and others. Beyond his Professorships, Fasano is passionate about developing inclusive learning communities outside the walls of academic institutions. As an educator, his mission is to help each student synthesize diverse fields of study to develop a unique and informed voice, a depth of attention, and a capacity to break free of reductive mindsets. His "Poetry Prompts," originally designed to help children create, have spread around the world, helping millions of people of all ages find their voices through the craft and magic of poetry.

Fasano is the author of two novels: The Swallows of Lunetto (Maudlin House, 2022) and The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the "20 Best Small Press Books of 2020." His books of poetry are The Last Song of the World (forthcoming from BOA Editions, 2024); The Crossing (Cider Press Review, 2018), praised by Ilya Kaminsky for its 'lush drive to live, even in the darkest moments'; Vincent (Cider Press Review, 2015), which Rain Taxi Review hailed as a 'major literary achievement'; Inheritance (Cider Press Review, 2014), a James Laughlin Award nominee; Fugue for Other Hands (2013) , which won the Cider Press Review Book Award and was nominated for the Poets' Prize, 'awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award.'

A winner of the RATTLE Poetry Prize, he serves on the Editorial Board of Alice James Books, and he is the Founder of the Poem for You Series. His writing has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Yale Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, Boston Review, American Poets, Measure, Tin House, American Poetry Journal, The Adroit Journal, American Literary Review, Verse Daily, the PEN Poetry Series, the Academy of American Poets' poem-a-day program, and other publications.

"In these moving, incandescent, and often mysterious poems, Joseph Fasano makes pain almost bearable with the beauty of his language, the wild leaps of his metaphors.  His is a strong and original voice!" - Linda Pastan

"Almost everywhere you turn in Inheritance, you find a poet brave enough to return poetry to its troubled and eternal origins…Fasano's otherworldly melancholy and grace turns out to also be a 'worldly clarity.' This is the poet I trust to see the world as it is, quietly writhing around us, like Kafka and Rilke before him. This is the poet who proves the world isn't what needs restoring so much as us.  With Inheritance, the necessary gifts of one poet's visionary spirit are now not just his but thankfully ours." - Dorothea Lasky