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Struggling to accept her impending blindness, the speaker in Julia B. Levine's fifth collection of poetry, Ordinary Psalms, asks everyday life to help her learn how to see beyond appearances into fundamental truths.
As she contemplates the loss of one friend to cancer and another to suicide, along with her own visual impairment, Levine holds the world "close as I needed / to see." Imagistic, lyrical, and at times imploring divine intervention from a god she does not know or trust, these poems curse and praise the extraordinary place we live in and are in danger of losing. Lamenting that "this world is a mortal affliction / with wounds in the beautiful," Ordinary Psalms provides a seductive and lyric rumination on radiance, loss, and grief.
As she contemplates the loss of one friend to cancer and another to suicide, along with her own visual impairment, Levine holds the world "close as I needed / to see." Imagistic, lyrical, and at times imploring divine intervention from a god she does not know or trust, these poems curse and praise the extraordinary place we live in and are in danger of losing. Lamenting that "this world is a mortal affliction / with wounds in the beautiful," Ordinary Psalms provides a seductive and lyric rumination on radiance, loss, and grief.
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Reviews
"The speaker in Ordinary Psalms is heightened to her world of sensation even as she is losing her sight. The book never quails here, nor does it dwell. Julia B. Levine celebrates and meditates upon the simple wealth of her surroundings-the natural environment, flora, wildlife, her home, her loves, her trepidations, and her delights. These psalms rise in a single voice, but they also manifest a col
Frank X. Gaspar
"This is a striking collection, from its poems of memory and personal loss to its odes to friendship and the natural world. The blindness poems, in particular, are so metaphoric, magical, and mesmerizing. It's like being underwater or driving fast beside a forest of tessellating trees, a confusion of green and trunks clacking by like railroad tracks. Read on and be both lifted and saddened, read o
Dorianne Laux
"These poems ride on currents of elegiac lamentation as well as currents of radical joy. I admire how awake they remain to the moment, to death, to friendship and love, and to the gradual diminishment of physical sight surrounded by gorgeous earthen beauty. I admire their deeply sensual language, their abundant feeling, and their generous heart."
Joseph Millar
Extended Details
- SeriesBarataria Poetry