Debt

by Mark Levine

Poems deal with identity, the past, work, dreams, literature, boundaries, and communication

Genres: Poetry, Literary Fiction

Hardcover

First published June 1, 1993

About the author

Mark Levine is the author of four books of poetry: Debt (1993), Enola Gay (2000), The Wilds (2006), and Travels of Marco (2016). His poetry has appeared in a number of anthologies, including American Poets in the Twenty-First Century: The New Poetics (2007) and American Hybrid (2009), among others. His work of nonfiction, F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century (2007), is a history of the outbreak of 148 tornadoes across the United States in early April 1973. He has written for magazines, including the New York Times Magazine, Outside, the New Yorker, and Bicycling magazine.

Levine is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. An associate professor of poetry at the University of Iowa, Levine has taught in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop since 1999.

~www.poetryfoundation.org

Reviews

[Ryan Bollenbach]

An intense collection about capitalism, debt, WWII, immigration and Judaism. As skittery as it is cutting. I really loved this collection and it seems particularly interesting in comparison to more recent politically-minded collections like Daniel Borzutzky's "The Performance of Being Human." Will be reading again for quite some time, I think.

[Luca Suede · Rating 3 out of 5]

25 years later it still stands up! The academic introduction by Srikanth Reddy was a beautiful love letter to Levine but had me brace myself for more jargon. & instead I got a page-turner that was direct. Really grabbed me at the beginning. There is movement & gravity in “Debt,” that functioned differently for me than in other poetic works. It is a collection that spans many themes but mostly rooted in Jewish identity. Levine also moves through childhood and sound and sex and mobility and death and on and on. A particular favorite:

“I am bending my knees when I speak. More a shovel than a lover” (44).

[Whitaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great book shows us how everything is great and worth to die for

[Floydd Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books of poetry I've ever read... the words haunted my dreams the night I finished it. The only other poet who has done this to me is Rilke.

[Emy Warrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Experimental. About the Holocaust.