Post by moira on May 16, 2008 21:17:11 GMT 2
The Dark Opens
Miriam Levine
The Dark Opens is the winner of the 2007 Autumn House Poetry Prize, chosen by Mark Doty,
who calls her work, "warm, breathing."
Sample poem:
Candlewood
for Julia
We go into dark and dark opens.
Boats tipped with light and moon on the water.
There is no difference between the tree and the shadow of the tree.
There is no space between light and the wave coming shoreward.
No break between the voice and the word.
There is no difference between your breath and your dear life.
There is no end of you.
Reviews for The Dark Opens:
"No break between the voice and the word," writes Miriam Levine, and indeed this is a speaker who seems entirely herself but somehow edgeless, too, so that she shades into whatever engages her attention. "It's terrible to be rooted forever like Daphne," she writes; she'd prefer to accept the invitation offered to her by Night: "Touch my face, I'll make you...unending."
Somehow these effortless poems manage to be deeply connected to the solid physical world of friends and children, husband and neighbors, but also touch upon an airy, unfettered interiority, so that they're both straightforward and complicated at once, both earthly and awash in a world of light."
-- Mark Doty
"Miriam Levine's The Dark Opens is ecstatic, ekphrastic, her poems standing at ultra-attention. She has the ability to encapsulate our cores while also bringing into focus the often fuzzy peripheries of our lives. A master of extended metaphor, Levine celebrates the body's triumphs and frailties, our earth's fragility and power. Her language is visually vigilant, disarmingly intimate. This is a wondrous, spiritually tender book."
-- Denise Duhamel
About the author:
Miriam Levine’s most recent book, The Dark Opens, was awarded the 2007 Autumn House Poetry Prize, chosen by Mark Doty. She is the author of three poetry collections; In Paterson, a novel; Devotion, a memoir, and A Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England. A recipient of a NEA fellowship and grants from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, she is Professor Emerita at Framingham State College, where she chaired the English Department and Coordinated that Arts and Humanities Program. She lives in Massachusetts and Florida.
Website: miriamlevine.com
ISBN: 978-1-932870-19-0, 63 pages, $14.95
Autumn House Press (January 1, 2008) tradepaper
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Amazon: tinyurl.com/4rg2jg