Roddy Lumsden wrote:
> ><<I wouldn't lose sleep over ampersands in a poem, though I would
> >probably put a book which used them back on the shelf without
> >reading it . . .>>
>
> >You would miss the work of Larry Levis, in that case.
>
> This is a new name to me Joe. Perhaps you could offer a brief introduction
> if I promise to drop my unfounded prejudice against the &?
>
> Roddy
Larry Levis died at age 50 two years ago. He grew up in California, but
in the
_other_ California, the central valley, an agricultural region. Some of
his
most moving poems are about horses. His final book, _Elegy_, was in
preparation when he died & was edited by David St. John & Philip Levine.
Most
of his poems are long enough to not excerpt well, so I will refrain. He
may be
the only American poet of his generation to have benefited from the
influence
of Rilke, developing a long, meditative line in his later work that
would seem
to owe very little to Whitman. If I were advising someone who had not
read any
of his work, I would suggest they begin with his first fully mature
book,
_Winter Stars_, then go on to _The Widening Spell of the Leaves_ & to
_Elegy_;
after that, one could go back & take a look at the earlier work, which
also
has its (more ironic) pleasures.
________________________
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts-5750
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
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________________________
"Always come down from the barren heights
of cleverness into the green valleys of folly."
::Wittgenstein
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