“Peter Campion’s new book of poems, The Lions, is as ferocious as it is memorable. These elegant passionate poems explore the way we live now in America at the beginning of the twenty-first century: our capacity for love and violence, our hunger for both truth and self-deception, our estrangement from and our connection to the natural world in all its beauty and indifference. In lines traditional and free, bracingly fresh and unpredictable, Campion affirms the value of intimate affection even while showing the frailty of such affection in a time of war. Campion is a first rate poet, and this is a first rate book.”

Alan Shapiro

“Like George Oppen’s, Peter Campion’s poems not only inhabit but create the space where the single soul collides with the roiling world. Should the poet ‘hold some ground against the surge’ or ‘carve a life’ from it? Campion won’t answer this question—not only because it cannot be answered but because he knows that poetry is itself a questioning, a refusal of ready hierarchies, a love-affair with tremor and noise. Like no one else’s, Campion’s poems are driven by the elegance of argument along with a recognition that argument alone will get us nowhere. Their language is everywhere perspicuous, everywhere surprising. Like a wild animal, they are ‘liveliest / just before they vanish.’ The Lion is an alarming, beautiful book.”

James Longenbach

“A poet whose great gift is for high resolution takes on the ’feeling of a substance / emptied’ in our collective life. The best poems in this book—‘1980: Iran,’ ‘1989: Death on the Nile,’ ‘Recurring Dream in a New House’—add something genuinely new to that meditation on public and private anxiety that extends from Lowell and Rich to McMichael and Bidart.”

Alan Williamson

“Peter Campion’s new book of poems, The Lions, articulates both the private intimacies of life and a robust involvement with the natural and political world. . . . Campion’s highly polished prose is always surprising and yet never jarring, leaving the reader ultimately forced to mete one’s own balance among the many forces playing into the quotidian, but allowed the brave, private ruminations of a poetic predecessor. The Lions shows that balance is possible without sacrificing any poise or elegance. A fine addition to contemporary poetry, I look forward to this young poet’s next compilation.”

Sycamore Review

"Campion’s meticulous poems have dangerous edges. He’s a major American poet in the making, if not already made."

Daisy Fried | Poetry Magazine

"Peter Campion’s voice is essential to the telling of the struggle of our time."

Ron Slate | Blackbird

"The lions is a generous book, and an ambitious one. The poems are never complacent, always sharpened by an intellect that is inquisitive but that also acknowledges the ultimate futility of finding easy answers to the implicit questions. This is a book that rewards each rereading."

Russ Kesler | Alabama Writers Forum

"The Lions shows that balance is possible without sacrificing any poise or elegance. A fine addition to contemporary poetry."

Steele Campbell | Sycamore Review

“Subtly astonishing. . . . Campion’s images are brave and unrelenting, precise.”

Andrew Osborn | Spoon River Poetry Review

“These are daringly beautiful poems. . . astounding. . . No matter how many books Peter Campion has written or published, The Lions makes clear his enduring contribution. . .” —Joanie Mackowski, Contemporary Poetry Review

Joanie Mackowski | Contemporary Poetry Review