Duress is a collection of devotional poems for souls in search of spiritual restoration–its contemporary psalms, lamentations, meditations, and praises were composed during the “anthropause” when the world paused. A poetry of resiliency, lyric in pulse and contemplative in spirit, it will encourage and uplift the weary hearts of wayfarers in a season of duress.

“Karen An-hwei-Lee has written her own book of wise and spirited psalms. There is, the poet attests, so much that we do not know, ‘yet we sing without sounding what lies beneath.’ And that is where these poems bring us—to the realization that amidst troubles, amidst the bad days, there are the good. . . . Furthermore, silence is not barren. It is ‘God, listening.’”

—Jill Peláez Baumgaertner, poetry editor, Christian Century

“With formal elegance and visionary comprehension, the poems of Duress prove witness to the immensity occasioned in the small, and the particularity made manifest in the endless expanse before us.”

—Scott Cairns, director of the MFA creative writing program, Seattle Pacific University

“In Duress, we are invited into the poet’s wide embrace of the universe. Karen An-hwei Lee’s poems flow like dream scenes, visions of the creation to which we are granted entry in the glancing beams of sunlight and God-light. The detailed generosity of her impulses enfolds us, part of the wide and richly detailed span of the creation she celebrates. Read these poems and welcome her words until they spark your own delighted responses!”

—Luci Shaw, writer in residence, Regent College