#Larry Levis

[lillyli-74]

I don’t see anything at the end of it except an endlessness.

~Larry Levis

#larry levis

[andwestillhadhours]

---Larry Levis, from "In the City of Light."

#larry levis #poetry

[softhe4rted]

Larry Levis, The Darkening Trapeze: Last Poems via: are.na

#i'm ok i'm just crying over this #pensando en justamente mis dos amigxs q no saben q cuando no existo por nada existo por ellxs #my friends saved my life <3 #on friendship #friendship (': #sobre estar enamorada de mis amigxs <3 #poetry #larry levis #the darkeing trapeze #hi my post

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of october

joseph brodsky collected poems in english, 1972-1999: “the hawk’s cry in autumn”

natalie diaz it was the animals

ruth stone as real as life

muriel rukeyser the collected poems of muriel rukeyser: “käthe kollwitz”

naomi shihab nye grape leaves: a century of arab american poetry: “making a fist”

larry levis elegy: “elegy with a chimneysweep falling inside it”

emily berry arlene and esme

erika meitner copia: “yizker bukh”

aracelic girmay sister was the wolf

joshua beckham take it: “[dark mornings shown thy mask]”

dana levin you will never get death / out of your system

delmore schwartz summer knowledge: selected poems (1938-1958): “darkling summer, ominous dusk, rumorous rain”

matthew olzmann mountain dew commercial disguised as a love poem

ghazal (@dobaara) my anger and loneliness are lovers

nikki allen search party: names for my mother

ellora sutton (newborn)

emily skaja letter to s, hospital

benjamín naka-hasebe kingsley born year of the uma

hieu minh nguyen litany for the animals who run from me

brandy nālani mcdougall he mele aloha no ka niu

ai vice: new and selected poems: “cuba, 1962″

gig ryan civil twilight

troy osaki o heat we protest

nick carbó andalusian dawn: “directions to my imaginary childhood”

chen chen i’m not a religious person but

sally wen mao oculus: “anna may wong stars as cyborg #86″

srikanth reddy voyager: “book three: 19″

golden & when they come for me (reprise)

natalie scenters-zapico notes on my present: a contrapuntal

evan knoll blood makes the blade holy

jesús papolete meléndez hey yo! yo soy!: 40 years of nuyorician street poetry a bilinguial edition: “of a butterfly in el barrio or a stranger in paradise”

kofi

#tbr #poems #poetry #poem list #poem #poet #poets #ruth stone #muriel rukeyser #naomi shihab nye #larry levis #joshua beckham #dana levin #delmore schwartz #emily skaja #evan knoll #matthew olzmann #troy osaki #nikki allen #ellora sutton #chen chen #golden #natalie scenters-zapico #srikanth reddy #hieu minh nguyen #ai #joseph brodksy #aracelis girmay #natalie diaz #jesús papolete meléndez

[valkaryah]

Larry Levis

#words #poetry #larry levis

[riverbird]

"Imagine a house without words, The family speechless for once At the kitchen table, & all night A hard wind ruining The mottled skin of plums In the orchard, & no one Lifting a finger to stop it. But imagine no word for “house,” Or wind in a bare place always, And soon it will all disappear— Brick, & stone, & wood—all three Are wind when you can’t say  “House,” & know, anymore, what it is." Larry Levis, from Though His Name Is Infinite, My Father Is Asleep

#larry levis

[dk-thrive]

I wanted, once, to be picked clean by music/ By wind, by sunlight.

I wanted, once, to be picked clean by music, By wind, by sunlight. I would stand outside in the winter dusk, I would think Of those extinct Scottish poets Who placed stones on their bare chests And then laid down in snow each night until The right poem came.

—Larry Levis, from “The Wish to be Picked Clean,” The Dollmaker’s Ghost (Dutton, 1981) (via The Vale of Soul-Making)

#Larry Levis #snow #winter #poetry #inspiration #scottish #scotland #dusk

[merulae]

Deity is in the details & we are details among other details & we long to be  Teased out of ourselves. And become all of them.

Larry Levis, “Elegy with a Bridle in Its Hand” in Elegy

#quote #Larry Levis #Elegy with a Bridle in Its Hand #Elegy #lit #quotes #poetry

[fathercoded]

“In the City of Lights”, Larry Levis | Dark 1x01, 3x07

#netflix dark #larry levis #comp #cw suicide

[goodmistakes]

#!! #this one knocked me right out #poetry #larry levis #family

[a-late-style-of-fire]

—Larry Levis, “In the City of Light”.

#poetry #writers and poets #larry levis #light #city of lights

[proserpentina]

I've barely done any art in a couple months but read some poems and got inspired

#death #larry levis #la strada #poetry #art #carry on

[manwalksintobar]

My Story in a Late Style of Fire  // Larry Levis

Whenever I listen to Billie Holiday, I am reminded That I, too, was once banished from New York City. Not because of drugs or because I was interesting enough For any wan, overworked patrolman to worry about— His expression usually a great, gauzy spiderweb of bewilderment Over his face—I was banished from New York City by a woman. Sometimes, after we had stopped laughing, I would look At her & and see a cold note of sorrow or puzzlement go Over her face as if someone else were there, behind it, Not laughing at all. We were, I think, “in love.” No, I’m sure. If my house burned down tomorrow morning, & if I & my wife And son stood looking on at the flames, & if, then Someone stepped out of the crowd of bystanders And said to me: “Didn’t you once know. . . ?” No. But if One of the flames, rising up in the scherzo of fire, turned All the windows blank with light, & if that flame could speak, And if it said to me: “You loved her, didn’t you?” I’d answer, Hands in my pockets, “Yes.” And then I’d let fire & misfortune Overwhelm my life. Sometimes, remembering those days, I watch a warm, dry wind bothering a whole line of elms And maples along a street in this neighborhood until They’re all moving at once, until I feel just like them, Trembling & in unison. None of this matters now, But I never felt alone all that year, & if I had sorrows, I also had laughter, the affliction of angels & children. Which can set a whole house on fire if you’d let it. And even then You might still laugh to see all of your belongings set you free In one long choiring of flames that sang only to you— Either because no one else could hear them, or because No one else wanted to. And, mostly, because they know. They know such music cannot last, & that it would Tear them apart if they listened. In those days, I was, in fact, already married, just as I am now, Although to another woman. And that day I could have stayed In New York. I had friends there. I could have strayed Up Lexington Avenue, or down to Third, & caught a faint Glistening of the sea between the buildings. But all I wanted Was to hold her all morning, until her body was, again, A bright field, or until we both reached some thicket As if at the end of a lane, or at the end of all desire, And where we could, therefore, be alone again, & make Some dignity out of loneliness. As, mostly, people cannot do. Billie Holiday, whose life was shorter & more humiliating Than my own, would have understood all this, if only Because even in her late addiction & her bloodstream’s Hallelujahs, she, too, sang often of some affair, or someone Gone, & therefore permanent. And sometimes she sang for Nothing, even then, & it isn’t anyone’s business, if she did. That morning, when she asked me to leave, wearing only The apricot tinted, fraying chemise, I wanted to stay. But I also wanted to go, to lose her suddenly, almost For no reason, & certainly without any explanation. I remember looking down at a pair of singular tracks Made in a light snow the night before, at how they were Gradually effacing themselves beneath the tires Of the morning traffic, & thinking that my only other choice Was fire, ashes, abandonment, solitude. All of which happened Anyway, & soon after, & by divorce. I know this isn’t much. But I wanted to explain this life to you, even if I had to become, over the years, someone else to do it. You have to think of me what you think of me. I had To live my life, even its late, florid style. Before You judge this, think of her. Then think of fire, Its laughter, the music of splintering beams & glass, The flames reaching through the second story of a house Almost as if to—mistakenly—rescue someone who Left you years ago. It is so American, fire. So like us. Its desolation. And its eventual, brief triumph. 

#poetry #Larry Levis #America #on fire #American poetry #breakup #divorce #love #romance #ashes

[alinaandalion]

My only advice is not to go away. Or, go away.  Most Of my decisions have been wrong. When I wake, I lift cold water To my face.  I close my eyes. A body wishes to be held, & held, & what Can you do about that?

“In the City of Light” by Larry Levis

#quotes #poetry #larry levis

[boricuacherry-blog]

#larry levis #poem

[poem-today]

A poem by Larry Levis

The Oldest Living Thing in L.A.

At Wilshire & Santa Monica I saw an opossum  Trying to cross the street. It was late, the street  Was brightly lit, the opossum would take  A few steps forward, then back away from the breath  Of moving traffic. People coming out of the bars  Would approach, as if to help it somehow.  It would lift its black lips & show them  The reddened gums, the long rows of incisors,  Teeth that went all the way back beyond  The flames of Troy & Carthage, beyond sheep  Grazing rock-strewn hills, fragments of ruins  In the grass at San Vitale. It would back away  Delicately & smoothly, stepping carefully  As it always had. It could mangle someone’s hand  In twenty seconds. Mangle it for good. It could  Sever it completely from the wrist in forty.  There was nothing to be done for it. Someone  Or other probably called the LAPD, who then  Called Animal Control, who woke a driver, who  Then dressed in mailed gloves, the kind of thing  Small knights once wore into battle, who gathered  Together his pole with a noose on the end,  A light steel net to snare it with, someone who hoped  The thing would have vanished by the time he got there.

Larry Levis (1946–1996)

#larry levis #american poetry #opossum