Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems

Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems - Hardcover

$35.00
$35.00
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Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems
  • Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems
Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems - Hardcover

Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems - Hardcover

by Larry Levis
$35.00
$35.00

Book Overview

All the blazingly original work by Larry Levis, "one of the greatest poets of a generation" (Carolyn Forché)

The poetry of Larry Levis increasingly occupies a legendary place of reverence among poets and readers--the spell of his reputation only continuing to widen in the thirty years since his death. From the briefer lyrics and deep image-making of his early books to the long sequences and operatic narratives of his last works, Levis's poems have an unmistakable signature, a way of expressing the sweep of history, perception, and heartbreak. Over his career, his poetic lines broadened to accommodate the cinematic aperture of his observations on American empire, poverty, landscape, migrant workers, political violence, addiction, and art. Levis's expansive poems came to resemble the interconnecting patterns just discernible in the eddies of a stream or the leaves circling in a wind.

Swirl & Vortex at last makes all of Levis's poetry available in one definitive volume. This collection includes the five books published in Levis's lifetime, a brilliant reconfiguration of Levis's posthumous books, and unpublished late poems, edited and with an afterword by David St. John. To trace Levis's poetic development into his extraordinary "late style of fire"--cut short by his early death--is one of the singular experiences in contemporary poetry. Swirl & Vortex is an essential collection by one of the great poets of the end of the twentieth century, and a transformative work spiraling out toward our future.
ISBN9781644453711
Author Larry Levis
PublisherGraywolf Press
GenreLiterature and Family
FormatHardcover
PublishedFebruary 2026
LanguageENG- English
Pages576
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

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About Larry Levis

Larry Levis was born in Fresno, California, in 1946. His first book of poems, Wrecking Crew, won the United States Award from the International Poetry Forum, and was published in the Pitt Poetry Series in 1972. His second book, The Afterlife, won the Lamont Award from the American Academy of Poets in 1976. In 1981, The Dollmaker's Ghost was a winner of the Open Competition of the National Poetry Series. Among his other awards were three fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Larry Levis died in 1996.

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