Song of Six Rivers - Softcover

Levinson, Zev; Phillips, CM; Schumann, Ashley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1947112023 ISBN 13: 9781947112025

Publisher: Humboldt State University Press, 2018

Synopsis

Song of Six Rivers is an epic poem memorializing the Humboldt Bay/Six Rivers region of northern California. Taking a bioregional approach to the geography and history of the Humboldt environs, the poem addresses why we are here on earth as human beings and, more personally, addresses the author’s own journey as a poet and teacher of poetry. In the poem, Zev’s friend Guy Kuttner, an educator and activist who passed away in 2011, speaks to the author from the beyond, instructing him to sing of the land where they worked and spent time together. As the poem explores mortality, it also confronts the death of Zev’s father who passed away when Zev was fourteen; he was a professor, cantor, author, and community leader. Other characters appear as well, contributing to the narrative and local color. While Jim Dodge and Jerry Martien are not mentioned by name, as Zev’s friends, colleagues, and mentors they appear—in the company of others—as the “old poets” who have inspired the author’s work and life. Jim was generous enough to work on this poem with the author.

About this title

About the Author:

Zev Levinson works with California Poets in the Schools, bringing poetry into classrooms and other sites. He has taught at Humboldt State University and College of the Redwoods, is a Redwood Writing Project teacher-consultant and teacher-leader, and a founder and facilitator of the Lost Coast Writers Retreat. Zev holds degrees in creative writing, literature, and the teaching of writing from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro; the University of California, Santa Cruz; and Humboldt State University.

Review:

On a journey of memory inspired by men he revered, Zev Levinson brings landscapes and Humboldt history reflected in evocative photographs vividly to life.  His song conveys a personal bond within nature with an immediacy of experience and a sense of the sacred that is heightened by awareness of death. Stephen Most, author of River of Renewal: Myth and History in the Klamath Basin and Stories Make the World: Reflections on Storytelling and the Art of the Documentary

. . . A quirky lifework poem with a coherent and positive vision of possibility in the face of loss. It is a truly beautiful piece about the sorrow and goodness of Californians in redwood country, and as part of it being about goodness, it evokes wonderful practical things that people can do to make the world better. David Blair, author of Arsonville, Friends with Dogs, and Ascension Days

. . . Levinson offers us a bold song from the frontiers of all waters and species, living and dead, to "build a bridge from grief." . . . These words of loss and joy ring with a mythic quality that summons native spirits . . . as well as the voices of . . . Whitman, Coleridge and Ginsberg. Susan G. Wooldridge, author of poemcrazy: freeing your life with words

About this edition

• Publisher: Humboldt State University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1947112023
• ISBN 13: 9781947112025
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 102
• Editor: Morgan Kyle
• Illustrator: Phillips CM, Rand Jennifer