“Levis was a master of lyrical thinking. He was our Whitman for the late twentieth century.”—Terrance Hayes
The Darkening Trapeze
Last Poems
- “These poems are wild, predatory, inescapably alive. . . . Levis dazzles us.”—Tess Taylor, NPR “All Things Considered”
The empty bar that someone was supposed to swing to him
Did not arrive, & so his outstretched flesh itself became
A darkening trapeze. The two other acrobats were thieves.
—from “Elegy with a Darkening Trapeze inside It”
Did not arrive, & so his outstretched flesh itself became
A darkening trapeze. The two other acrobats were thieves.
—from “Elegy with a Darkening Trapeze inside It”
The Darkening Trapeze collects the last poems by Larry Levis, written during the extraordinary blaze of his final years when his poetry expanded into the ambitious, operatic masterpieces he is known for. Edited and with an afterword by David St. John and published twenty years after Levis’s death, this collection contains major unpublished works, including final elegies, brief lyrics, and a coda believed to be the last poem Levis wrote, a heart-wrenching poem about his son. The Darkening Trapeze is an astonishing collection by a poet many consider to be among the greatest of late twentieth-century American poetry.
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About the Author
Credit: Jay Paul
Praise
- “The humane poems found here still exhibit Levis’s exceptional sensitivity and bursts of emotional weather.”—The New York Times Book Review
- “Levis’s sensitivity and social consciousness are on display in this elegiac work.”—The New York Times Book Review
- “Fans of Larry Levis will delight in the publication of The Darkening Trapeze. . . . [which] demonstrates [his] intensity and singular voice.”—The Washington Post
- “The Darkening Trapeze is . . . a critical addition to 20th century American poetry. It does what poetry is supposed to do, which is to enrich our lives by looking at the world around us, capturing that world on the page, and make us better, more grateful human beings.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
