“Daniel Lassell is a master of subtraction, of what he calls a loosening joy. The poems here are filled with song, prayer, and silence. Restless and reflective, they shift and rub against the natural world, its vastness and its granularity, with striking precision and clarity. Here, a world accumulates even as it is undone—wreckage and reverence inexorably intertwined.”

“Daniel Lassell’s Frame Inside a Frame is a book about looking from various vantage points and perspectives across distance and time. In Lassell’s gentle and capable hands, an aperture closes and opens like the valves of an alive and beating heart. I am grateful for all that courses through this collection: the wild and farm animals, the micro-moments of satisfaction and pleasure, and the indelible landscapes of Lassell’s singular, poetic life.”

“What delights this gallery of poetic frames offers, leading us through the labyrinths of time and memory! Reading these poems is like following some Kentucky Dante through the hinterlands and, ultimately, down into the underworld to eavesdrop on the murmuring there. But what elevates this collection into the quietly sublime is the poetic voice of Daniel Lassell—direct, honest, revelatory—a humble witness to the beauty and the carnage of our times. I hope readers enjoy this fine collection as much as I have.”

“Remarkably intimate and complex, Frame Inside a Frame is a gift to read—and reread. Traversing the landscape of these poems, I find myself intellectually and emotionally moved, returning again and again to their sites of transformation, their intricate interrogations of what it means to be. Each poem is ‘like a resurrected body’ on the page, another ‘doorway in those woods’ that opens to deepen our understanding of the world, and our complicated place in it. Lassell has written a multifaceted gem of a book.”

“Frame Inside a Frame is a kaleidoscopic chorus of devoted wonder. Through poems that brilliantly intensify the relentless echo and honesty of multiple perspectives, Daniel Lassell draws a faithful attention to the fragility and the fierceness of what connects us, to the forces that might leaven or level our capacity for feeling found. Bless this book.”

“Daniel Lassell’s electrifying second collection sits us in the middle of nature and asks us to imagine how fragile life and its creation can be. No matter how hard we try to protect our children or ourselves, it ‘Doesn’t matter. In the end, the hardened object is a fragile object—like the body, the earth.’ Lassell works to build formal frames within these poems, borders not only to protect his loves but to understand them and himself. We are guided through snapshots of childhood and divinity, mercy and marriage, of a ‘small dog / yapping / yapping / into hoisted sky’ and how we take for granted what can be so easily taken from us.”

“Whether dealing with climate change, an unsettling encounter with a bat trapped indoors, or the larger questions of what it means to inhabit a body, Daniel Lassell’s second full-length collection, Frame Inside a Frame, refuses to succumb to the temptation of pat answers or easy binaries. Using the concept of picture frames, the poet explores his subjects from multiple perspectives, aiming for an understanding that leads, not to Utopia, ‘but a room next to it.’ Lassell is a poet of generous intellect who employs an admirable economy of words to explore a world where grief is ‘more commonplace than joy,’ and we are caught ‘between question and haunt.”

“This book, to me, seems timeless and utterly present in its desire, through the hard work of formal rigor and dreaming, to look deeply at the damaged and often beautiful world as a means of making something new.”

“In Daniel Lassell’s Spit, we see the leaning faces of barns disappear. There is a relationship between what is sacred and what is empty, between homesickness and the guilt of thinking of any place as one’s own. What I love about this collection is its ability to convey both an adoration of landscape and the violence inherent to the pastoral: ‘beads of yolk dapple the soil.’”

“Rife with biblical references, Daniel Lassell’s poems suggest that the animal kingdom is distinct, regardless of our claims of preservation, and cannot be governed by humans who lack the capacity to first understand ourselves. The devastation of this collection is in being deftly led through the experiences within its microcosm, only to question the whole of existence. In image after taut image, the terror and magic of life are all.”

“In this captivating and inventive debut, there’s good humor and plenty of sorrow, a story of recovery and growth, of finding community and healing in a place far away. Daniel Lassell writes beautiful poems with tenderness and care, even when he tells hard truths.”

“These poems teach me again that our membership in the practiced knowledge of life and death is equal to its burden of daily chores, the specific transactions of love we choose or don’t, the countless ways we can still return to our places and ourselves. Spit is at once a coming-of-age story and an elegy for that so-called coming-of-age, a necessary guidebook for anyone hoping to go home again.”

“Daniel Lassell’s arresting and visceral debut smolders with heartache, gritty natural landscapes, and an insistent lyrical beauty that both celebrates and haunts the edges of our familiar world. It is the story of a boy and young man who grows up amid vast yet confining farmlands, llamas, power plants, sunset-blazed wheat, and a family he both cherishes and knows he must flee. And the lessons are hard-learned, whittled into bark like initials separated by a heart. These poems illuminate the complexity, curiosity, and rawness of life in an often-neglected part of America. Spit is a starkly rendered cultural exploration, personal journey, and love letter to the familiarity and the strangeness that compose a ‘home.’”

“The author of this engaging set of poems takes his readers on an adventure as they learn about life on a rural American farm. The writings are about human family life as much as they are about the animals that reside in the barn. There are moments of joy and moments of sorrow. A good work ethic, high expectations, family brokenness, healing, life and death, and growth through it all are just some of the many themes, invoking deep and critical thought about the complexities of life.”

“Daniel Lassell’s chapbook, The Emptying Earth, is a perfect little bomb of eco-poetry, human interference/consequence, and stunning imagery.”

“Elegant in both structure and verse, this beautiful hand-stitched chapbook introduces a Transcendentalism perfect for a new age in literature. Nostalgia collides with the current realities of climate change, unsustainable consumerism, and humanity’s encroachment on natural ecosystems. It asks difficult questions like “who’s wealthed us into existence?” and “Is non-existence so bad?” Each poem is a quiet environmental manifesto, reminding us about the delicate balance in their everyday actions, that they have the power to tip in the wrong direction. This is quietly rebellious, deeply contemplative, philosophically speculative, and exceedingly timely.”

“An insightful narrator and a cast of characters explore capitalism’s questionable side. From commentaries on the exploitation of the individual and their talents to the inundation of ads that drive greed, materialism, and mass consumption, Lassell highlights the existential darkness inherent within society. At times, dark humor borders on being satirical yet unabashedly communicates the harsh truth when the dollar matters more than humanity. Dystopian, thought-provoking, and engaging, these poems linger.”