Invitation to poetry reading by Dana Levin Sunday, February 26

[Larry Robinson]

You are cordially invited to join us for a rare Sonoma County reading by poet Dana Levin

 


Sunday, February 26 at 2:00 PM

at the home of Rebecca Evert in Sebastopol

Seating is limited. For the address and to reserve a seat, please e-mail Rebecca at revert at sonic.net <mailto:revert at sonic.net>. 

Dana Levin’s new book of poetry is Banana Palace (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). Her first book, In the Surgical Theatre, was chosen by Louise Glück for the 1999 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize and went on to receive numerous honors, including the 2003 PEN/Osterweil Award. http://www.danalevinpoet.com <http://www.danalevinpoet.com/>
Copper Canyon Press brought out her second book, Wedding Day, in 2005, and in 2011 Sky Burial, which The New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Sky Burial was noted for 2011 year-end honors by The New Yorker, the San Francisco Chronicle, Coldfront, and Library Journal.

Levin’s poetry and essays have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including Best American Poetry 2015, The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and The Paris Review. Her fellowships and awards include those from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN, the Witter Bynner Foundation and the Library of Congress, as well as the Rona Jaffe, Whiting and Guggenheim Foundations. 

A teacher of poetry for over twenty years, Levin has served as the Russo Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico (2009–2011), as well as Faculty and Chair of the Creative Writing and Literature Department at College of Santa Fe (1998–2009) and Santa Fe University of Art and Design (2011–2015). She currently serves each Fall as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Maryville University in St. Louis.

The Living TeachingRelated Poem Content Details

You wanted to be a butcher
but they made you be a lawyer.

You brought home presents
when it was nobody’s birthday.

Smashed platters of meat
she cut against the grain.

Were a kind 
of portable shrine — 

I was supposed to cultivate a field of  bliss,
then return to my ordinary mind.

You burned the files
and moved the office.

Made your children fear
a different school.

Liked your butter hard
and your candy frozen.

Were a kind
of diamond drill, drilling a hole
right through my skull — 

quality sleep, late November.

What did it mean, “field of bliss” — 

A sky alive “with your greatest mentor” — 

I wore your shoes, big as boats,
flopped through the house — 
while you made garlic eggs with garlic salt, what

“represents the living teaching” — 

Sausages on toasted rye with a pickle, 
and a smother of cheese, and 
frosting
right out of  the can without the cake — 

You ruled
with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other, you raged
at my stony mother, while I banged 

from my high chair, waving
the bloodied bone 

of something slaughtered — I was
a butcher’s daughter.

So all hail to me — 

Os Gurges, Vortex Mouth, I gap my craw
and the bakeries of the cities fall, I 

stomp the docks — spew out a bullet stream
of oyster shells, I’ll

drain the seas — the silos
on every farm, the rice

from the paddy fields, the fruit
from all the orchard trees, and then I’ll

eat the trees — 

I’ll eat with money and I’ll eat
with my teeth until the rocks 

and the mountains curl
and my blood sings — 

I’m such a good girl 

to eat the world.

	- Dana Levin


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