{"product_id":"9780822990987","title":"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, \u003ci\u003eElegy\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The poems were written in the six years following publication of his previous book, \u003ci\u003eThe Widening Spell of the Leaves\u003c\/i\u003e, and continue and extend the jazz improvisations on themes that gave those poems their resonance. There are poems of sudden stops and threats from the wild: an opossum halts traffic and snaps at pedestrians in posh west Los Angeles; a migrant worker falls victim to the bites of two beautiful black widow spiders; horses starve during a Russian famine; a thief, sitting in the rigging of Columbus’s ship, contemplates his work in the New World. The collection culminates in the elegies written to a world in which culture fragments; in which the beasts of burden—the horses, the migrant workers—are worked toward death; a world in which \"Love's an immigrant, it shows itself in its work. \/ It works for almost nothing\"; a world in which \"you were no longer permitted to know, \/ Or to decide for yourself, \/ Whether there was an angel inside you, or whether there wasn't.\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eElegy\u003c\/i\u003e, as Levine says, was \"written by one of our essential poets at the very height of his powers. His early death is a staggering loss for our poetry, but what he left is a major achievement that will enrich our lives.\"","brand":"University of Pittsburgh Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47118915436784,"sku":"9780822990987","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780822990987_p0.jpg?v=1763753364","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780822990987","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}