Elegy (Pitt Poetry Series) Paperback – October 30, 1997

Amazing work, probably the best poetry I’ve ever read. Incredibly complex, he has an amazing way of conceptualizing life.

Larry Levis was a unique and important poetic voice. I like all of his books, but this one is particularly revealing, not only about Levis, but also the Philip Levine, the late former poet laureate, who edited this fine book.

For the poet who is learning how cadence and pacing works in a poem, many of the poems in Elegy are very instructive. Levis comes up with many fine poems with strong lines.It's worth noting that Phillip Levine writes in the forward that when he received the poems, in many cases they had not been revised into their final forms. Because Levis had passed before this work could begin, many of the poems are earlier revisions (or perhaps not revised at all). This, too, can be instructive; I found myself spotting improvements to many lines as I was reading.Unfortunately, a fair number of the poems are rambling and inaccessible to the reader. This is usual for the poetry of the 90s, when craft and voice were emphasized by critics, editors and MFA programs above accessibility. Indeed, for many years, inaccessible poems were preferred above readable, understandable poems, so I can only partially hold this against the poet. I do find myself being critical, however, of the constant shift in landscape in many of poems in this collection. It's possible that additional revision would have fixed these problems but that is pure speculation.Overall, this is an instructive collection of poetry. Much of the language is lush and descriptive and the poems are imaginative in content. Just don't expect an immediately accessible collection of poetry.

Read this in an afternoon. Beautiful.

"The Oldest Living thing in LA," "Photograph: Migrant Worker," "Elegy for Whatever had a Pattern in it," and "Elegy with a Thimbleful of Water in a Cage" have all left marks on me. I see the self-deprecating humor that other reviewers mention, but Elegy is the right title for the collection. When you want a truly harrowing encounter with despair -- and not just some guy wallowing it -- this is the book for you. I would disagree with beachdude's statement that the poems aren't accessible. They invite you to do a little investigating into references, and that's a good thing.

In his posthumously published work, Elegy, Larry Levis intertwines an inspirational voice that at times is truly musical, with a conversational voice that is personable and also penetrating. For example in his poem "Anastasia & Sandman" Levis wrote, "Let's do it right now before wisdom descends upon us" and then lead into, "Because what's the use?". These lines play together and create ample lyricism while also approaching casual discussion or simply honest considerations about the world. He also easily oscillates between very specific details and images that contain more general metaphors. Themes invoked by this work include: personal reflection on the human condition, what love means in life, loss & death, breaking away from impersonality, the influence that others have on personal development, keeping alive familiar places, and remembering people from the past. Elegy maintains Levis' contemporary conversational style while also taking readers on a walk with him through personal experiences.

When Larry Levis, author of The Wrecking Crew and The Widening Spell of Leaves, died unexpectedly in May of 1996, he left behind Elegy, a collecion of twenty poems. Readers will recognize the style of Levis. His poems are labyrinthine and digressive in a way that many readers might find off-putting, but his associative peregrinations do little to detract from the overall power of his work. Readers will find the same themes they have come to expect from Levis: death, ecstasy, and human indifference. Reading Levis' work is like witnessing a car accident--a particularly bad one--your own.

If we, the reader, are skeptics and believers of the possibility of art, if we imagine that there is another space language occupies outside of that small room that is our lives, if we are willing to accept ironies and unwillingly acknowledge the tragedy that has always been the recurring theme of the individual, then this book is the past, the present, and future of our desire to live. It's hard to comprehend that there can be anything so miserable as a wish to live forever or anything so beautiful as two old horses named Anastasia and Sandman, but Larry Levis is one of the greatest poets in the American language and culture because of his ability to texture language and improvise narratives so fluid that the reader understand and arrives at that place where all words and all stories begin and end. That place being the middle or the ever-present present that exists when a word is spoken or read and the mind attempts to find the object, the meaning, or the example for what that word represents. Or that ever-present that becomes the present as the story teller remakes the story so that it is again something real and intangible and we experience it because it is there and we do not experience it because it is not there. I don't know how else to explain the book and each poem that invites the reader to examine mortality without the immediate allusion to death but the difficult exercise of life and the ironies it weaves around us. It is impossible to read this book and not feel completely desperate, lost, and in want of every moment of passion we've ever owned and lost to circumstance, fear, the idea of being embarressed in front of our peers. Even the depraved moments we've had in our lives seem worthwhile in the language, story, and voice of this book that is so much of heart of its author that it remains a ghost behind its words. And if you've ever wanted to be bridge your life as an adult to your lost childhood, if you've ever wanted to be invisible, or drive as fast as your car could go, or found yourself talking to a horse, a tree, an empty page that replies without sympathy, without comfort, and even mocks you in its silent and indifferent manners, then this book might remind you of how it felt to have so many desires with nothing but your hands to carry them with.