A Condition of the Spirit: The Life and Work of Larry Levis

by Christopher Buckley (Editor)

The untimely death of Larry Levis in 1996 left the world of American poetry stunned and dismayed. His work was of such depth and such amazing resonance, that it was admired and studied by an entire generation of poets and readers, regardless of esthetic or cultural predispositions. Levis's poems crossed borders, broke down barriers, and invited a sharing of the strange, sweet loneliness of being that is the fundamental human lot. A Condition of the Spirit brings together reviews, essays, interviews, and mediations by more than forty American poets profoundly affected by Levis's life and work. But that's not all: the book also contains twelve previously uncollected essays by Levis himself, making it a handbook for the study of the poet's thinking on the craft of poetry and the craft of life.
Contributors to the collection include Philip Levine, Charles Wright, Diane Wakoski, Stephen Dunn, David St. John, Peter Everwine, Dave Smith, Stephen Sandy, Nancy Eimers, Peter Stitt, David Wojahn, Paul Zimmer, Sandra Gilbert, David Young, and Gerald Stern.

Genres: Poetry

664 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2004

About the author

Christopher Buckley is a poet. For 2007-2008 he was a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry at the University of California Riverside.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.