Man Overboard: New and Selected Poems - Paperback

by Michael Levin (Author)

These 30 mostly short poems capture the liquid music of dreamed free association and suggest paths from that enchanted music to a better state, traversing love lost and found, family tensions, international politics, and 20^th-century history. Several of them have won freestanding awards or been reprinted in anthologies. They 'stick a shiny fork deep into earth's volcanic heart, balancing repetition and internal rhyme -- the compass to plot our course and bring us back alive' says one reviewer. Another reviewer remarks that the author's 'pen is a painter's brush, creating transparency with unexpected depth. His work transports us to the essence of moments in different times and places with unusual clarity. Following him we walk through landscapes and moods, sharp-edged forms and fading contours. We breathe new air -- and smell it. We sense vividly the spaces he conjures.' The author's 'poems are a captivating collection of dramatic slices of life netted over decades. Rhythmic, accessible passages read like colorful murals, describing tastes, sounds, and visions in sensual tones and longings, connecting to intimate relationships with people and places he has known or imagined. This book was like an elixir. It soothed during a time of great stress, ' concludes a third.

The ancients believed that humans require poetry to live fully as well as orient their lives. 'Levin's fresh descriptors and flowing line will carry you to a moment -- a moment of acknowledgement, different in each poem but similar in their power to strike sparks, ' another reviewer noted. They resonate with that tradition.