Features - February 2012

Poet with a steady job

An introduction to Lawrence Joseph

I first met Lawrence Joseph nearly thirty years ago. I was a sophomore in high school, with verses in hand and trouble in mind. He was a young professor at the University of Detroit School of Law, where my father served as dean. A serious poet with a steady job, Joseph struck my father as a good role model for his freshly literary son, so he sent us out for lunch at a diner near campus.