The Only Worlds We Know

Michael Lee's The Only Worlds We Know is a staggering debut that grapples with sobriety and survival.

The Only Worlds We Know Lee paints a nuanced and tactile portrait of addiction, and an unflinching look at the life that is built in recovery.

Having suffered unspeakable grief, these poems are patient meditations on loss and the land where the people we love have not only lived, but are also buried.

The Only Worlds We Know is constantly looking for the “words that carry us into the dark and then beyond it.” Lee's work carries readers, beyond personal demons, beyond life, death, and grief, tenderly, patiently pulling us through The Only Worlds We Know.

An award winning short film of Michael Lee's poem "Pass On" helped to break stereotypes about poetry and pave the way for thousands of poets to broadcast their work in video as well as in print.

“How much liquor can the body hold until the body leaves itself behind?” -- from, Out There

Advance praise for The Only Worlds We Know

The Only Worlds We Know is an “act of remembering like sharpening a blade until the blade is gone.”
-Terrance Hayes, Author of How to Be Drawn

Michael Lee has found new ways to write about some of the crucial subjects―love and love lost, recovery and addiction, the bullet and the pill.
-Billy Collins, US Poet Laureate and Author of Sailing Alone Around the Room