The work of Larry Levis is getting a nudge thanks to the @elisagabbert517 ‘s recent review of “Swirl & Vortex,” a posthumous complete collection of Levis’ work. She highlights the way the collection guides you through Levis’ evolution as he masterfully weilds the language. The poetry makes the everyday into the magical, the nothing into something and back again.
From the book jacket, “Over his career, his poetic lines broadened to accommodate the cinematic aperture of his observations on American empire, poverty, landscape, migrant workers, political violence, addiction, and art. Levis's expansive poems came to resemble the interconnecting patterns just discernible in the eddies of a stream or the leaves circling in a wind.”
And other poets would agree…
"One of the greatest poets of a generation" --Carolyn Forché / @carolynforche
"An undisputed poetic master, Larry Levis inspires an almost cultlike obsession in those introduced to his poems" --Ada Limón, Publishers Weekly / @adalimonwriter
“Levis's collected poems are capacious and spellbinding, and they grow larger with each reading. Swirl & Vortex is a cosmos, a bible." --Terrance Hayes, author of So to Speak / @terrancehayes
"The voyage through a single poem by Larry Levis, let alone through this expansive volume, will change you, change what you know a poem to be, and 'poem, ' for Levis, is indistinguishable from life” --Diane Seuss, author of Modern Poetry / @dseuss
“For all of us longtime acolytes, I'm overjoyed; of the soon to be initiated, those reading Levis for the first time, I'm jealous." --John Murillo, author of Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry
