Once I Gazed at You in Wonder: Poems - Hardcover

Levi, Jan Heller

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807123641 ISBN 13: 9780807123645

Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr, 1999

Synopsis

Winner of the 1998 Walt Whitman Award of The Academy of American Poets.

Given in Memory of Eric Mathieu King

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"This is such a brave first book of poems! Levi delves into utmost intricacies of origins and destinies, as in mother, as in father, as in husband, as in self bound and un-bounded: A deeply lyrical pursuit sustained by an astonishing intelligence. . . " June Jordan

"In her beautifully realized first book, Jan Heller Levi testifies, with immoderate compassion, to the wonder that we are here at all, witnessing a now in which every moment is spacious. . . . Ardent yet free of gush, the spontaneity and conversational ease of her poems assure that the quality of wonder, like that of mercy, is not strained. In addition to unguardedness and heart, there is backtalk bite and edge, lip and lash. . . . [Once I Gazed at You in Wonder] draws upon the powers intrinsic to poetry and helps me remember its unextinguishable necessity." Alice Fulton, from the judge's citation for the 1998 Walt Whitman Award

"These are passionate poems growing through time into a rueful, black humorous self-knowledge and a constant, edgy love for life in spite of everything: as Zbigniew Herbert says, 'Sometimes you have to offer even the betrayed world a rose.'" Jean Valentine

About the Author:

Jan Heller Levi is the editor of A Muriel Rukeyser Reader and is working on a biography of Rukeyser. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Ploughshares, Antioch Review, New Orleans Review, and Pequod. She divides her time between New York City and St. Gallen, Switzerland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0807123641
• ISBN 13: 9780807123645
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 90