Lee Rossi was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He studied 5 years for the Roman Catholic priesthood before leaving the seminary. He has published two ESL textbooks, as well as a critical study of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He is the author of two previous books of poetry, Ghost Diary (Terrapin Press, 2003) and Beyond Rescue (Bombshelter Press, 1992), and has appeared in various anthologies, including Blue Arc West (Tebot Bach, 2006), Chance of a Ghost (Helicon Nine Editions, 2005), Mischief, Caprice, & Other Strategies (Red Hen Press, 2002) and Grand Passion: the Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond (Red Wind Books, 1995). His poems, reviews and essays have been published in numerous journals, including Tar River Poetry, The Atlanta Review, The Green Mountains Review, The Sun, Poetry East, Chelsea, The Wormwood Review, Nimrod, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poet Lore, and The Southern Poetry Review. From 1986 to 1992, he edited Tsunami, a journal of contemporary poetry. He is Staff Reviewer and Interviewer for Pedestal. He lives in California.

Books by Lee Rossi:

Other poems on the web by Lee Rossi:
Four poems
Three poems

About Wheelchair Samurai:

"Lee Rossi is a poet of wit and elegance. The poems in his third collection, Wheelchair Samurai, will engage, inform, delight, and surprise the reader. The range of multilayered subjects is vast: motel sex, poverty, Descartes and the legendary fly, hilarious alternative endings to The Story of O, tattoos "covering the drive-in movie screen of his [brother-in-law's] back," a lunar eclipse, death, and Francis Bacon. What seems casual at first glance, emerges as a profound meditation on life (human, animal, insect) and nature. We are all inextricably connected in Rossi's metaphorical world. [Still, there is often an underlying sense of sadness and betrayal.] One poem in particular, "Letter to a Grandchild," is sound advice for living, writing, loving. This is a poet at the top of his form and the wise reader will sit back and listen."
—Gloria Vando

"Lee Rossi is a masterful tour guide through landscapes of the sacred and profane, a universe of moments both heartbreaking and funny, where fighting roosters are 'pit bulls with feathers,' and the summer air is 'a minestrone of milkweed and pollen.' These poems are scintillant with wit, shot through with sudden revelations and the startling, brief gleam of compassion and truth. Like the crowd gathered around a suicide in 'Almost Icarus,' Rossi keeps us, his readers, 'straining for a glimpse of that body / its imperfect beauty as fragile as our own.'"
—Ruth L. Schwartz

"As Rossi says in one of these poems, 'surfaces betray.' And so he delves, finding the truth that lies beneath. The poetry in this compelling collection exposes the dark and the light of human relationships - between husbands and wives, soldiers and lovers, fathers and sons, gods and goddesses."
—Frances Lefkowitz