Nonfiction / Poetics
680 Pages
ISBN: 0-190055-92-0
Paper: $27.95 |
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News of the sudden and untimely death of Larry Levis in 1996 left the world of contemporary American poetry stunned and dismayed. His work was of such depth and such amazing resonance, it was admired and studied by an entire generation of poets and readers, regardless of esthetic, political, or cultural predispositions. Levis's poems crossed borders, broke down barriers, and invited a sharing of the strange, sweet loneliness of being that is the fundamental human lot. A Condition of the Spirit brings together reviews, essays, interviews, and meditations by more than forty American poets who were profoundly affected by Levis' life and work. Not since the death of James Wright has there been such an outpouring of thoughtful and affectionate tribute. Tthe book also contains twelve previously uncollected essays by Levis himself, making it a virtual handbook for the study of the poet's thinking on craft of poetry and the craft of life.
Contributors to the collection include Philip Levine, Charles Wright, Diane Wakoski, Stephen Dunn, Deborah Digges, David St. John, Peter Everwine, Dave Smith, Stephen Sandy, Nancy Eimers, Peter Stitt, David Wojahn, Paul Zimmer, Sandra Gilbert, David Young, and Gerald Stern.
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Christopher Buckley teaches in the creative writing department at the University of California, Riverside. He has received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, most recently for 2001; a Fulbright Award to Yugoslavia; and four Pushcart Prizes. Among his twelve books of poetry are Closer to Home (2003) and Star Apocrypha (2001).
Alexander Long's poems, essays and book reviews have appeared in American Writers, Quarterly West, Pleiades, Third Coast, and 5am. He lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania where he makes his living as a teacher and musician. |
"An inestimable loss...His last book, Elegy, is stunningly beautiful and prescient. A major talent at the brink of its majority...He remains...the pride of his generation, sharp-edged and shining, his only ambition for his poems, and his poems alone. The right stuff, for sure." |
"I had to stop and tell the audience what I had to tell myself, that my brother in poetry, my dear friend, had died, and that I owed the lines I had just read to Larry Levis. I did not tell them that for thirty years his fierce devotion to his art had served as my inspiration and model. I did not tell them that I found in his poetry originality and daring that urged me to risk more in my own writing. I did not tell them that when I am weary of the mediocrity and smallness of so much that passes for poetry I go to Larry's work and revive my belief in the value of the art we shared...The Dollmaker's Ghost, Winter Stars and The Widening Spell of the Leaves...are collections of poetry that will last as long as our language survives..."
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