ENOUGH STRAY MENTIONS of Larry Levis were swimming into my ken (e.g., by Mathias Svalina) that I was starting to think, hmm, I really should read some Larry Levis, and after reading this collection (the second of the five volumes he published in his lifetime, 1946-1996) I am contemplating a deep dive.
Levis tends to be both precise and mysterious, which appeals to me:
Applying to Heavy Equipment School
I marched farther into the Great Plains
And refused to come out.
I threw up a few scaffolds of disinterest.
Around me in the fields, the hogs grunted
And lay on their sides.
His figurative language continually surprises ("At night I lie still, like Bolivia," or those "scaffolds of disinterest"), as does his imagery ("And so I think of the darkness inside the horn, / How no one's breath has been able / To push it out yet [...]").
What appealed to me most is that this is a poetry of desolation that somehow consoles. Seems impossible, but there it is--in this respect a bit like the poetry of Mr. Svalina himself. "Signs" is a poem I expect to return to. Two of its four stanzas:
And this evening in the garden
I find the winter
inside a snail shell, rigid and
cool, a little stubborn temple,
its one visitor gone.
[...]
I stay up late listening.
My feet tap the floor,
they begin a tiny dance
which will outlive me.
They turn away from this poem.
It is almost Spring.
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