Elegy (Pitt Poetry Series)

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Winter Stars (Pitt Poetry Series): Larry Levis: www.newyorkethnicfood.com: Books

Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. This question drives the collection, just as Levis drives through his youth probably on a tractor , past his present, and dwindles, dawdles, dragging his feet toward death, his own or his father's -- or perhaps even both. Levis' line is simple without being simplistic, with few words within the lines and a general narrative weaving through the poems as whole entities -- reminding me, in the best way, of country music.

Rooted in the real and the rural, the poetry really packs a punch with the sudden materialization of strangeness or abstraction: These two abstractions are, content-wise, what Levis appears to be most interested in, presenting them as a matter of fact, no two ways about it. His poetry is so rooted in the personal experience that it becomes a sort of universal understanding; we experience the world as he once did and as he hopes to understand it in the present.

Because, Levis says, death. A strong contender for the best book I've ever read - poetry or otherwise. It's hard for me to do this one justice in a paragraph; all I can say is that Winter Stars doesn't contain a single bad poem, and its most memorable lines get stuck in my head like a pop song. A really, really, heartbreaking pop song. Since the first time I read this book, I've turned to it more times than I can count.

But also on those days you wouldn't trade for anything - the days when inspiration and energy seem to pulse through your body, and you've never been surer of the people and things you love - Winter Stars has been by my side on those days, too. Levis has an incredible gift for articulating many of the struggles and abstractions of life in concrete images and beautifully written lines, and the result is often deeply moving. I was really shocked to find out what a talented author Levis was.

He's really a HUGE talent, even if you really don't care for poetry. In Winter Stars, Larry Levis covers death, relationships and his life with a poetic power that is rarely found in modern poetry. These poems include reflections on the poet's childhood, elegies to his father, and observations on the human condition.

The latter is a masterpiece. A must have for anyone studying late twentieth century poetry. Larry Levis has done something old and new: Each poem is able to be read as its own, individual piece, and yet, when placed together with the collection acts a chapter to a personal life story. One walks away from winter starts with a more realized understanding of poetry and the poets behind it, thanks to thematic motifs that fall throughout like snowflakes and from the singular narrative voice.

One of the most prevailing motifs throughout Larry Levis's poetry collection, Winter Stars, is the theme of time - in particular youth, age, and how the two intersect. For example, his first poem, The Poet at Seventeen, speaks in a narrative tongue, describing scenes more so than playing with more formal elements, such as sounds. In addition, his first section, aptly titled Winter Stars, explores age in a variety of ways - through looking at the poet as a young person, looking at the past in particular youth with the gaze of the unavoidable.

The narrator seems to suggest that everything that happened was destined to happen and to try and change fate adds up to nothing. Winter Stars deals with old age, in particular with stars as signifiers of memory - the most interesting part about the title Winter Stars, which appears three times - as name of the book, name of a sub section of the book and the name of a poem within that subsection, is the concept of Night and Winter as simultaneously the beginning and ending of things: And the voice, the voice has authority so that the reader sits up and listens.

Try reading them aloud - the music of them entrances even when the meaning is not clear. Ultimately it is about death and how prescient is that considering Mr. Levis died unexpectedly in the middle of composing these poems.

I was moved in a way that only the best A poet of images, beautiful, concrete, surprising images. I was moved in a way that only the best poetry can. Jul 13, Nicola rated it it was amazing. Poet-friends kept recommending this book to me and now I can finally understand why. Yes, yes, yes, yes. These poems are working on so many levels. I was trying to read them as an example of narrative for an Intro to Poetry class I'm teaching next semester and love the way they show how expanded web-like luminous narrative and worlds! This book taught me more about how to write about violence than so many other books with that explicit intent.

Mar 29, Hannah Baker-Siroty rated it it was amazing Shelves: In my top 5 books of poetry, no question. Larry Levis is a brilliant poet and I am grateful for this book. He makes the long poem seem short, and for that alone his is a poetic genius Jan 31, Kate Rosenberg rated it it was amazing Shelves: I posthumously adore you.

Series: Pitt Poetry Series

These poems are like houses of cards. Or like a beaver dam. Well-constructed and so much more. I weep at them. Read them or suffer an emptiness that will haunt you until your death. May 25, Gregory Donovan rated it it was amazing. Along with all the other books by Larry Levis, Elegy continues to be a powerful influence and inspiration to all sorts of poets and to all manner of people who love poetry. It's an essential book for anyone who enjoys being seriously engaged with the art of poetry. Jul 28, Danielle DeTiberus rated it it was amazing. His posthumous collection- read: Jul 23, Rae rated it it was amazing Shelves: I'm reading this slowly.

Very moving, at times so much so that I can only read one poem at a time.

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Great book to put next to your bed and read when you can spend some time thinking about each line. Jun 04, Amy rated it it was amazing. A moving, brilliant final collection. I must admit that I haven't read every poem in it because I can't bring myself to know I will never read another new poem by this amazing writer and man. May 25, Darrin Doyle rated it it was amazing. I lost more than half of my poetry books in a flood. This one was salvaged, and I just reread it.

One of my favorite lines: They'll mock you one way or the other. Mar 09, Greg rated it really liked it. Longer poems, but worth the patience. Not difficult reads, just extended imagination required by the reader. Nov 02, Robert rated it really liked it Shelves: I wish I had never read it. The rest of the book has flashes of excellence akin to [Book: Jan 09, Jeremy Allan rated it it was amazing Shelves: This book is simply superb.

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I should have read it when I first started writing poems. If you haven't read it, do so. Feb 14, Dallas Swindell rated it liked it. The poems in Larry Levis' posthumous collection are often prosaic and elegaic, merging contemporary and traditional Roman proclivities in poetry. The entries in the collection employ the harsh sentiments and inexplicable violences of the world in flux to cut anachronistic shadows into the face of each poem's remembered or dreamed world. At times Levis recounts historical events or eras from the 20th century and beyond as a conduit for his thieves and despots and wandering souls.

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The backdrops he The poems in Larry Levis' posthumous collection are often prosaic and elegaic, merging contemporary and traditional Roman proclivities in poetry. The backdrops he constructs, and the tensions gnashing their teeth in each world's shadows, all combine to provide dense, somber meditations on the course of events both personal and historical.

Many of the poems are written as elegies for or with the characters he guides through each elegaic couplet, cutting deep to the core of their constituent bodies with rhetorical barbs. His rhetorical turns always broaden each poem and suggest bigger, more fundamental, questions that he never explicitly puts to the page, or as Levis puts it "that [which] looks back in recognition. Jun 02, Ja'net rated it it was ok. I really wanted to love this book, especially since the poem that brought me to this collection--"Elegy with a Bridle in Its Hand"--is one of the best poems I've ever read in my life.

And, yes, there are some excellent poems in there, but the first section of the book was instantly forgettable, and the elegies, after a while, became a long, drawn out mess of abstractions and pronouns. I don't mind reading poems several times to get them, but I found these poems tedious and began to resent having to constantly reread them when I didn't enjoy them in the first place.

Oct 14, Lisa Folkmire rated it it was amazing.

One of the best poetry books on my shelf. Mar 31, NLK rated it it was amazing. Levis says there's no story and, at the end, his poems always ascend into heaven.

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Sep 04, Sofia rated it it was ok Shelves: Some lovely passages, but it is sadly repetitious, under-edited and overlong. Oct 27, Melanie rated it it was ok. Not crazy about books built after the author dies. But I love the work of Larry Levis. Jul 23, Jay rated it really liked it. Philip Levine assembled Elegy from Levis's manuscripts after Levis's death, from a heart attack, just before his 50th birthday.

I know this isn't true, but the book seems to get its courage up as it goes along-- it opens with a few calm, kind of boring lyric poems then gradually expands into elegies whether called so or not that are colossal and frightening and world-containing. What part of Larry Levis isn't contained in these poems? Sep 09, Melissa rated it liked it Shelves: Sometimes the poems were really amazing, and I especially liked much of the "Elegy withs" but the writing seemed somewhat lazy at times.

The emotion was there perhaps too much there, even but the language wasn't specific enough. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. His father was a grape grower, and in his youth Levis drove a tractor, pruned vines, and picked grapes in Selma, California. Levis died of a heart attack in , at the age of Books by Larry Levis.

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