The Gazer Within collects the prose of one of America's favorite poets. Refreshingly candid, laugh-out-loud funny, and, at the same time, intimate, the pieces trace Larry Levis's early years growing up on his father's farm, his decision at sixteen to become a poet, and his undergraduate experience in the days of the Vietnam War. In addition to memoir, there are critical reviews, including his seminal essay on the poet Philip Levine, and reviews of poets as diverse as W. D. Snodgrass and Zbigniew Herbert. David St. John's foreword speaks eloquently of Levis's enduring legacy: "Of the poets of his generation, Larry Levis spoke most powerfully of what it means to be a poet at this historical moment. With the same majesty he brought to his poetry, Larry Levis engaged his readers with the most subtle and disturbing questions of the self to be found in the prose--essays, reviews or interviews--of any contemporary American poet. Broadly international in his scope and deeply personal in his reflections, Levis addressed poetic concerns that are both immediate and timeless. For many of us who struggle with these issues, Larry Levis's prose on poetry stands as some of the most capacious to be found since Randell Jarrell's." The late Larry Levis was the author of six volumes of poetry. He was Director of the Creative Writing Program, University of Utah; Professor of English, Virginia Commonwealth University; and also taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop.

The Gazer Within (Poets On Poetry)

Biographies & Memoirs

Levis, Larry

Arts & Literature

University of Michigan Press

Wrecking Crew: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Univ of Pittsburgh Pr

Poems deal with the past, adolescence, small town life, danger, death, betrayal, marriage, love, nature, and the poet

Winter Stars (Pitt Poetry Series)

Poems explore the desire for personal freedom and the final awareness of its price

The Widening Spell of the Leaves (Pitt Poetry Series)

Elegy (Pitt Poetry Series)

A collection of the poems of Larry Levis. It features poetry selected from his first five books: Wrecking Crew (1972); The Afterlife (1976); The Dollmaker's Ghost (1981); Winter Stars (1985); and The Widening Spell of the Leaves (1991).

Selected Levis (Pitt Poetry Series)

University of Pittsburgh Press

Wrecking Crew: Poems

Since the appearance of his first book in 1972, Larry Levis has been one of the most original and most highly praised of contemporary American poets. In Winter Stars, a book of love poems and elegies, Levis engages in a process of relentless self-interrogation about his life, about losses and acceptances. What emerges is not merely autobiography, but a biography of the reader, a “representative life” of our time.

"Establishes Levis indisputably and once and for all as one of the younger masters." --North American Review "In this book, Levis descends through memory and history with bravery and authority. He seems to be writing the poems we all need to read right now." --Antioch Review Larry Levis was born in Fresno, California, in 1946. His first book of poems, Wrecking Crew, won the United States Award from the International Poetry Forum, and was published in the Pitt Poetry Series in 1972. His second book, The Afterlife, won the Lamont Award from the American Academy of Poets in 1976. In 1981, The Dollmaker's Ghost was a winner of the Open Competition of the National Poetry Series. Among his other awards were three fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Larry Levis died in 1996.

A few days before his death in 1996, Larry Levis mentioned to his friend and former instructor Philip Levine that he had "an all-but-completed manuscript" of poems. Levine had years earlier recognized Levis as "the most gifted and determined young poet I have ever had the good fortune to have in one of my classes"; after Levis's death, Levine edited the poems Levis had left behind. What emerged is this haunting collection, Elegy. The poems were written in the six years following publication of his previous book, The Widening Spell of the Leaves, and continue and extend the jazz improvisations on themes that gave those poems their resonance. There are poems of sudden stops and threats from the wild: an opossum halts traffic and snaps at pedestrians in posh west Los Angeles; a migrant worker falls victim to the bites of two beautiful black widow spiders; horses starve during a Russian famine; a thief, sitting in the rigging of Columbus’s ship, contemplates his work in the New World. The collection culminates in the elegies written to a world in which culture fragments; in which the beasts of burden—the horses, the migrant workers—are worked toward death; a world in which "Love's an immigrant, it shows itself in its work. / It works for almost nothing"; a world in which "you were no longer permitted to know, / Or to decide for yourself, / Whether there was an angel inside you, or whether there wasn't." Elegy, as Levine says, was "written by one of our essential poets at the very height of his powers. His early death is a staggering loss for our poetry, but what he left is a major achievement that will enrich our lives."

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Levis, Larry. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Levis, Larry

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Levis, Larry. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Gazer Within (Poets On Poetry)

Wrecking Crew: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)

Winter Stars (Pitt Poetry Series)

The Widening Spell of the Leaves (Pitt Poetry Series)

Elegy (Pitt Poetry Series)

Selected Levis (Pitt Poetry Series)

Wrecking Crew: Poems

Winter Stars (Pitt Poetry Series)

The Widening Spell of the Leaves (Pitt Poetry Series)

Elegy (Pitt Poetry Series)