Elegy

Description

A few days before his death in 1996, Larry Levis mentioned to his friend and former instructor Philip Levine that he had ""an all-but-completed manuscript"" of poems. Levine had years earlier recognized Levis as ""the most gifted and determined young poet I have ever had the good fortune to have in one of my classes""; after Levis's death, Levine edited the poems Levis had left behind. What emerged is this haunting collection, Elegy.The poems were written in the six years following publication of his previous book, The Widening Spell of the Leaves, and continue and extend the jazz improvisatio.;""Contents ""; ""Foreword by Philip Levine ""; ""I ""; ""The Two Trees ""; ""In 1967 ""; ""The Oldest Living Thing in L.A. ""; ""Anastasia and Sandman ""; ""Photograph: Migrant Worker, Parlier, California, 1967 ""; ""Shiloh ""; ""The Poem Returning as an Invisible Wren to the Wild ""; ""II ""; ""The Thief in the Painting ""; ""Boy in Video Arcade ""; ""The Cook Grew Lost in his Village, the Village in the Endless Shuffling of Their Cards ""; ""The Smell of the Sea ""; ""Elegy with a Petty Thief in the Rigging ""; ""Elegy for Whatever Had a Pattern in It ""; ""III ""