Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
From Ars Poetica
Six monarch butterfly cocoons clinging to the back of your throat—
you could feel their gold wings trembling. . .
Dana Levin’s singular voice and talent are unmistakable. Wedding Day is Levin’s quest to synthesize the public and private, to find pattern and connection amid the disparate elements of modern life. Relentless in her examinations, she ultimately puts faith in poetry, believing it is the truest means—and best chance—to bridge the chasms between soul and society. Readers will put faith in Levin’s poetry as well.
Dana Levin grew up in California's Mojave Desert. Her debut volume, In the Surgical Theatre, received nearly every honor available for first books and emerging writers. Other honors include fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Witter Bynner Foundation and the Library of Congress, the Rona Jaffe and Whiting Foundations. A 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, Levin chairs the Creative Writing and Literature Department at College of Santa Fe in Sante Fe, New Mexico
From Library Journal
For her debut collection, In the Surgical Theatre, Levin (creative writing, Coll. of Santa Fe) won the 1999 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize and the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares; it's no wonder, then, that her follow-up has been anticipated by academic scholars and poetry lovers, who won't be disappointed. While her first work focused on the gritty details of physical matter, often its desecration or decay, Levin's current work offers insight into the most personal and unspoken thoughts that can be easily overlooked: "we were losing our bodies/ digitized salt of bytes and speed we were becoming a powder/ light/ bicarbonate/ what we might have seen, if we had looked." Her voice speaks to the private wars of self and the dark violence of reflection. Readers will find that this work carries the pulse of their darkest sorrows, in the breath of their humanity. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.--April Davis, STG International, NIST, Oakotn, VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information
"intimate and hyponotic...whether turning her gaze inward or outward, these poems question the moral, aesthetic, and metaphysic needs that poetry exists to fill."
--Ploughshares
"Dana Levin's poems are extravagant...her mind keeps making unexpected connections and the poems push beyond convention...they surprise us."
--LA Times
"Images that are satisfyingly clear...and excitingly inexplicable"
--Robert Pinsky, Washington Post
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781556592195 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Copper Canyon Press |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2005 |
| Pages: | 96 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Wedding Day
By DANA LEVIN
Copper Canyon Press
Copyright © 2005 Dana LevinAll right reserved.
ISBN: 1-55659-219-1
Chapter One
Techno
I was tracking the stars through the open truck window, my friend speeding the roads through the black country-
and I was thinking how the songs coming from the radio were like the speech of a single human American psyche-
the one voice of the one collective dream, industrial, amphetamine, and the stars unmoving-
the countryside black and silent, through which a song pumped serious killer over and over-
and I could feel the nation shaping, it was something about the collective dream of the rich land and the violent wanting-
the amphetamine drive and the cows sleeping, all along the sides of the dark road-
never slowing enough to see what we might have seen if the moon rose up its pharmaceutical light-
aspirin-blue over the pine-black hills what was rising up-
mullein or something else in the ditches their flameless tapers-
world without fire the song heralded a crystal methedrine light-
while the sky brought its black bone down around the hood of the truck the electronic migration-
we were losing our bodies-
digitized salt of bytes and speed we were becoming a powder-
light-
bicarbonate-
what we might have seen, if we had looked-
Cinema Verite
And the lights go down- hush.
And a light comes up - the screen.
That brightens, so well, our dark day. That brightens
to a fountain in a square, dolphins without their tails- without their heads. Just their arched backs crowning a chaos of broken nymphs, what's left of the government of the sea- The light shifts. Widens. Black-and-white
necklace of fires erupting from the gas line, buildings bereft of facades-
strangers picking through a desolation, passports, lovers, gone-
then weeping in French. Then credits in French in Czech in Deutsch then
he Village cafes, joie to the nth degree-
trumpeting out, like loud flowers, along Bleecker Street.
After which there's a drink.
Then a toke, beside the garbage cans-
And then a late train and a key in the lock and the lights going up in the den of the metropolitan twelve o'clock with its last hopeful seconds, that we won't go to bed bored-
* * *
Hush.
Thoughts everywhere taxiing hurriedly.
A little like New York, isn't it, ceaseless hive, humming despite a historical exhaustion-Outside
the sky's apartment panorama. Every twelfth window blued with light-
beacons of the bag-eyed tribe called Who Bricked the Doorway to Sleep-
3 AM, slumped on the couch, to surf the blood and promise:
dances to banish the hunch 'n' shiver the Claritin the Klonopin new kind of soap for an old kind of stain, channels surging toward the sea-
* * *
Wire of light.
Dawn sheen thin along the river.
Burrowing into every screen in your single room like an IV, feeding the face that will medicate the blood in the day, anchor tethering you to news-
until you step out into the afternoon glare, snap on the dark lenses, foam of gray speakers into your ears and pump up
a perfect noise to soundtrack the filmed-over day-
thinking, What time does it start.
thinking, I am so late.
thinking, Not the 6 but the B, the B to the N, the N to the light flooding the stairs up to Union Square and opening out onto a kind of joy, the escape into the art of another country's pain, and then the screen fades and the people stand and the bright suffering comes to an end-
No.
Yes.
How.
Ars Poetica
Six monarch butterfly cocoons clinging to the back of your throat-
you could feel their gold wings trembling.
You were alarmed. You felt infested. In the downstairs bathroom of the family home, gagging to spit them out- and a voice saying, Don't, don't-
Glass Heart
could the West creep in to your idea of happiness-abundance which, gave no comfort, in which your loneliness was spared-
* * *
The student wrote: she wipes tears from her heart.
Forgotten, on the kitchen table glassy, beaded with sweat-
The line is too sentimental, said the teacher, unless I see it literally: taking a sponge to the anatomical heart, wiping and wiping the tears off it-
glass heart, so transparent-the tears drove around its autobahn
Then the kids came home and found it pulsing there. Like in a washing machine, you could see the grief go round and round-
The student wrote: sucking tears out of her aorta with a straw-
a bitterness so pronounced it was a kind of ammonia, a world in which one could lose one's parents and be put on a train alone-
Her grandfather had owned a little store for years. They can shoot out the windows, he would say, wagging a finger, as long as they don't set the street on fire-
glass heart, so transparent
Was it their mother's, their father's? It lay weeping in the heat. But they had to leave, to help deliver groceries-
The student wrote: in my left my heart my right my bone, beating my heart like a bloody drum-
Ovens, the grandfather muttered. In Russia they ate us raw.
so transparent
Meal after meal no one claimed it. After a while no one saw it, though it ticked at the center of the table like a clock-
singing O, this sack of water, swaying on its hook of bone.
Ars Poetica
would it wake the drowned out of their anviled sleep-
would it slip the sun like a coin behind their eyes-
* * *
The idea, the teacher said, was that there was a chaos left in matter-a little bit of not-yet in everything that was- so the poets became interested in fragments, interruptions- the little bit of saying lit by the unsaid- was it a way to stay alive, a way to keep hope, leaving things unfinished? as if in completing a sentence there was death-
Quelquechose
You want to get in and then get out of the box. form breakage form
* * *
I was in the fish shop, wondering why being experimental means not having a point- why experimentation in form is sufficient unto itself (is it?)- But I needed a new way to say things: sad tired I with its dulled violations, lyric with loss in its faculty den- Others were just throwing a veil over suffering: glittery interesting I-don't-exist- All over town, I marched around, ranting my jeremiad. Thinking, What good is form if it doesn't say anything- And by "say" I meant "wake somebody up." Even here at the shores of Lake Champlain mothers were wrenching small arms out of sockets. Not just the mothers. What were the fathers doing, wrenching small arms out of bedside caches- How could I disappear into language when children were being called "fuckers"- by their mothers- who were being called "cunts" by their boyfriends- who were being called "dickheads" behind their backs- It wasn't that I was a liberal democrat, it was that bodies had been divested of their souls- like poems- Trying to get in or out of the box. And the scallops said, "Nulles idees que dans les choses." And I said, "I'll have the Captain's Special with wedges instead of fries." And everywhere in the fish shop the argument raged, its baroque proportions, the conflict between harmony and invention. But then a brilliance - The movement of her gloved hands as she laid the haddock out one by one- The sheered transparency of her latexed fingers, in and out of the lit display case as if they were yes, fish- Laying haddock out in a plastic tub on a bed of ice, her lank brown hair pulled back from her face with a band- Yes it was true she had to do this for the market but there was such beauty in it- she was the idea called Tenderness- she was a girl who stood under fluorescent lights making six bucks an hour- and she looked up at me and held out a haddock with both her hands, saying it was the best of the morning's catch. this hush, my pollen-the ordinary grace in the buds. the crowding. my basement sorrows - salt and shadow, saying Lucky, lucky, your tiniest sadness. this desert of fragments, open handed voyage. this urge to making a scrapbook of stars-
American Poet
For weeks every Friday I went to see films at the School of Theology. Every Friday I would get there half an hour early so I could buy candy at the store that closed at seven. I would walk out around the building and lean against a wall facing Foothill Boulevard, watching the blood and pearl of cars as they sped in opposite directions. And every Friday there would be a cricket trilling endlessly against the din of traffic. Inaudible, unless you stood right at the spot where it lodged itself in the little crack between the walk and the wall- It legged the air ceaselessly where no one could hear it. I would stand right next to it and watch the traffic stream. Thinking it was like an American poet. The moon pooled. The cars wheeled and wheeled.
Glory
The terrible aesthetics of the red and blue in the pasteled yards, against the soft pink of camellias, An affront to beauty in a purely visual sense. Purely, that white assertion, when nothing was purely anymore The flags, and the violets in regiment below them. The dandelions in chaos below them-
* * *
The river of rage and peace that is a river of bones. The river of flame and peace that is a river of ash- The story of guns in someone else's city, every day with your toast and coffee- Then the red and blue over the green of the park, oranged in the trash can fires. Could anything be purely aesthetic when appearance was the symptom of a disease- You drove past them under a regiment of stars.
Over the terran order. It was a holiday but you needed to work, debt rising around you like a flood.
* * *
And would the guns and the city ever wake each other up, would they wake each other, if they stood at a juncture- Through the underpasses. Each break in the broadcast an eye closing, a hand sliding over a face.
* * *
The river of pain and the river of willed forgetfulness. The river of blood and the river of powders crushed- The terrible aesthetics of the red and blue over the chemical fields, the milk-green vats in the sun- The aesthetics of not knowing what was inside them, of the vermilion sunset right now. The river of heat and the river of ice in our drinks. The river of heat through the sluice of your throat, the ignition you won't turn on- still you couldn't make it mean when nothing was purely anymore. The river of heat and the muzzle at the river of veins. The aesthetics of not knowing what was inside you, behind the green vats lighting in the night- You thought you were alone as we swam the channels of distraction. But traffic flowed like plasma: Purity going one way, Sacrifice another-
Suttee
Cars oiling slowly through the rich grid of the Basin. White, red, the chaining hemoglobes, from the ridge you watched them, their shhh and wahhh wafting up through the canyon, the medicine-smelling trees- Eucalyptus. Pink stars of ice plant, night-drained of color. Open your mouth, he said.
* * *
Do you want Batman or Spider-Man. Do you want the wizard hat or Professor X, the green skull with a rose in its teeth, do you want the thunderbolt or the smiley face. George Washington with spirals for eyes.
* * *
You were a feelingless light- without parents or hunger- sliding your back along the length of the car, then slipping to the glass smacked ground- and found the moon analgesic- pocked and chemical for your amputated tongue. you opened your mouth and he steadied your head, and slipped another president in- and walked you to the cement lined river, furious for the mercury-ridden sea- after days of hard rain, palm fronds smashed up against the overpass pilings, shopping cart streaming by- saying, Do you want Aquaman or the Sacred Heart. That elephant god. Remover of Obstacles, Mary with her methadone eyes.
* * *
You followed the rush. Swift as vapor together you skimmed along that chocolate vein, there was a glow at the end of the water- Was it the sea opening and closing its phosphorous hand, there was a fist in your chest that kept mimicking it, it was flesh-encrusted, it needed to be phosphored clean- Smoke. Smell of gasoline. And then you saw it, something shipwrecked against an overpass rail, burning cocoon of flame- You didn't move. You didn't think about a driver- You stood starry as its image trembled in the water like a butterfly trapped in oil- and took his hand. Ravishing, the hot chemistry. You walked toward the burning machine.
It Was Yoked to a Black Hunger
The raven lifted. Circled like a skate on a groove of air- the fur at the neck ruffled up. Ruffling up, each follicle tying to leave that meat as the raven swooped down, poked its beak into that beating snuff. the rabbit not dead not yet- it pecked and pecked, until the one red spot welled up. A thin steam from the rabbit, like a wick blown out. The snow sparkling. And the raven cocked its black eye, dipped its beak in the red pool it had made- for the ink of elegy.
White Field
over which you hover with a flaming glass- saying, There is a fire in it, an invisible burning left in nature that demands to be revealed-
* * *
And as I was coming around the trail a hummingbird perched on a thin top branch and it was a sign to me: hummingbird, green emblem of joy- Then a black-spotted butterfly with orange wings in the yellow chamisa-it was a sign of my transformation- ignoring the grand indifference, the way the pines took no notice of you as they dropped their cones, needled branches swaying in a conspiracy of wind-
* * *
When the man emerged from the brush with a knife was that the kind of burning you meant?
When the man emerged-
It was the way the sun came through the cottonwood leaves and coined them up into gold disks slight fire at the edges a whole treasure of them in a half-moon carpet on the east side of the tree it was the way the leaves split light into scales that put me on the mountain sugared with pollen and the pox of violence the way the sun flamed up into strings the few red strands of his hair the bronze the burning creation all the arson inside
that could give you a fire out of which to speak, give you a fire in which to wait out the terror. if a man emerged from the brush with a knife. scattering the gravel with his feet-
* * *
And when I wrote the sun lifted-Each aspen went up like a torch-
Little l, thin as a match- Turning the word into the world-
where the chamisa smelled like honey-even a yellow dust of it on his forehead as he advanced, where you stood mute- spores so thick they closed the throat, where you read it- past all paralysis to understand the sign: it was nobody's sweetness- as he came crouching forward, knife drawn. into the white, white field-
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Wedding Day by DANA LEVIN Copyright © 2005 by Dana Levin. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.