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Winter Stars
Since the appearance of his first book in 1972, Larry Levis has been one of the most original and most highly praised of contemporary American poets. In Winter Stars , a book of love poems and elegies, Levis engages in a process of relentless self-interrogation about his life, about losses and acceptances. What emerges is not merely autobiography, but a biography of the reader, a “representative life” of our time.
104 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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618 people want to read
About the author
Larry Levis
33 books56 followersLarry Patrick Levis was born in Fresno, California, on September 30, 1946. His father was a grape grower, and in his youth Levis drove a tractor, pruned vines, and picked grapes in Selma, California. He earned a bachelor's degree from Fresno State College (now California State University, Fresno) in 1968, a master's degree from Syracuse University in 1970, and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1974.
Among his honors were a YM-YWHA Discovery Award, three fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Levis died of a heart attack in 1996, at the age of 49.
Among his honors were a YM-YWHA Discovery Award, three fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Levis died of a heart attack in 1996, at the age of 49.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
January 14, 2010
Taking a deep breath here: _____.
Dear friends, I stand before you today to admit openly that I had not known Larry Levis' work until this morning. YES I claim to be a practicing poet & YES I claim to know some things about the art. But:
Today, this moment, and no doubt for some time to come, I am humbled and devastated by this book, read while sitting and on my microfiber couch over the course of two hours while drinking coffee and not moving for the entire second half of the book, even to pee. I got up once to refill my cup and throw some Glenn Gould on the stereo. I grabbed my notebook and pen on my way back to the couch.
One of my undergrad poetry students asked me last semester, in passing, if I had read Levis and I admitted I hadn't. She gushed about Winter Stars. I promptly borrowed it from Jeremy, who promptly borrowed it back to finish his comps, then returned it to me for extended borrowing. I did not read it until this morning.
After reading the first four poems ("The Poet at Seventeen," "Adolescence," "The Cry," and "Winter Stars") I filled an entire page of my notebook with triggered memories from my childhood I could harvest for my own work. Little snaps in the head, like found synapses, all going ping ping, finally. This work is a masterpiece, and it has been wedged in a small cavity in my bookcase just watching me glide by every morning to feed the cat and feed myself and to escape without knowing it.
Big, glow-worming gush-bucket of a heart I have for this book right now.
Dear friends, I stand before you today to admit openly that I had not known Larry Levis' work until this morning. YES I claim to be a practicing poet & YES I claim to know some things about the art. But:
Today, this moment, and no doubt for some time to come, I am humbled and devastated by this book, read while sitting and on my microfiber couch over the course of two hours while drinking coffee and not moving for the entire second half of the book, even to pee. I got up once to refill my cup and throw some Glenn Gould on the stereo. I grabbed my notebook and pen on my way back to the couch.
One of my undergrad poetry students asked me last semester, in passing, if I had read Levis and I admitted I hadn't. She gushed about Winter Stars. I promptly borrowed it from Jeremy, who promptly borrowed it back to finish his comps, then returned it to me for extended borrowing. I did not read it until this morning.
After reading the first four poems ("The Poet at Seventeen," "Adolescence," "The Cry," and "Winter Stars") I filled an entire page of my notebook with triggered memories from my childhood I could harvest for my own work. Little snaps in the head, like found synapses, all going ping ping, finally. This work is a masterpiece, and it has been wedged in a small cavity in my bookcase just watching me glide by every morning to feed the cat and feed myself and to escape without knowing it.
Big, glow-worming gush-bucket of a heart I have for this book right now.
The earth, for example, has often been a lie,
And the wind its rumor.
Together, once, they drove all
The better people away.
(from "Oklahoma")
September 13, 2014
We did not know we were lights dancing on black water.
April 29, 2014
One of the best books of poetry I’ve read, one that often led me to put down the book and pick up a pen. The title poem, “Winter Stars,” is especially mesmerizing. I also love “The Cry,” in which,
Then, everything slept.
The sky & the fields slept all the way to the Pacific,
And the houses slept.
The orchards blackened in their sleep,
And, outside my window, the aging Palomino slept
Standing up in the moonlight, with one rear hoof slightly cocked,
And the moonlight slept.
The white dust slept between the rows of vines,
And the quail slept perfectly, like untouched triangles.
The hawk slept alone, apart from this world. . . .
. . . And the prostitutes slept, as always,
With the small-time businessmen, their hair smelling of pomade,
Who did not dream.
Dice slept in the hands of the town’s one gambler, & outside
His window, the brown grass slept,
And beyond that, in a low stand of trees, ashes slept. . . .
The poems are long, narrative, complex, often discursive (and I usually prefer the short and succinct), but so engaging that I hardly noticed. I was tempted to copy out many lines, but they are all more powerful in context. Instead, I’m just going to return to the beginning and read the book again. As well as his other collections. But here are just a few teasers.
“The trees wearing their mysterious yellow sullenness
Like party dresses.”
“And vines like woodwinds twisted into shapes
For playing different kinds of silence.”
“A sky that stays there, above
Any reason for a sky.”
“Style, after all, is a kind of humor,
Something truly beneath contempt.”
“The earth, for example, as always been a lie / and the wind its rumor.”
“If there is only one world, it is this one.”
Then, everything slept.
The sky & the fields slept all the way to the Pacific,
And the houses slept.
The orchards blackened in their sleep,
And, outside my window, the aging Palomino slept
Standing up in the moonlight, with one rear hoof slightly cocked,
And the moonlight slept.
The white dust slept between the rows of vines,
And the quail slept perfectly, like untouched triangles.
The hawk slept alone, apart from this world. . . .
. . . And the prostitutes slept, as always,
With the small-time businessmen, their hair smelling of pomade,
Who did not dream.
Dice slept in the hands of the town’s one gambler, & outside
His window, the brown grass slept,
And beyond that, in a low stand of trees, ashes slept. . . .
The poems are long, narrative, complex, often discursive (and I usually prefer the short and succinct), but so engaging that I hardly noticed. I was tempted to copy out many lines, but they are all more powerful in context. Instead, I’m just going to return to the beginning and read the book again. As well as his other collections. But here are just a few teasers.
“The trees wearing their mysterious yellow sullenness
Like party dresses.”
“And vines like woodwinds twisted into shapes
For playing different kinds of silence.”
“A sky that stays there, above
Any reason for a sky.”
“Style, after all, is a kind of humor,
Something truly beneath contempt.”
“The earth, for example, as always been a lie / and the wind its rumor.”
“If there is only one world, it is this one.”
February 15, 2023
I have been with this book since i was 16 i think he might be The great love of my life
April 22, 2012
A book to read a hundred books. Amazing.
October 4, 2017
Closer to 4.5. Levis's autobiographical work normally wouldn't be my cup of tea, but his phrasing is impeccable.
October 4, 2023
Some really incredible poems in here. Definitely going to reread, and then again (and maybe again...)
December 6, 2025
This was stunning.
And inspiring, I kept putting it down to jot down ideas.
And inspiring, I kept putting it down to jot down ideas.
June 26, 2012
Passionate, narrative-driven poems in a discursive free-verse style. On the subject of his parents, Levis writes: "[T]heir frail bodies/...Reminded me of ravines on either side of the road,/When I ran,/And did not know why." It is this image of Levis as an 17-year-old working-class boy trying to run away from his parents and from his past that gives the first section of Winter Stars its remarkable poignancy. The book's middle section, "Let Nothing You Dismay," is rather feeble in comparison, providing an object lesson in how difficult it is to write about one's ex-lovers without seeming like a self-mythologizing egomaniac (case in point: the floridly titled poem "My Story in a Late Style of Fire," which includes the jarring lines "But all I wanted/Was to hold her all morning, until her body was, again,/A bright field.... Billie Holiday, whose life was shorter & more humiliating/Than my own, would have understood all this"). The book's final three sections, which are more externally oriented (they touch upon life in samurai-era Japan, 19th-century Italy, and World War II Romania), are more successful, fortunately.
April 10, 2015
I left this collection feeling ambivalent. There are some poems here, "Adolescence," "Winter Stars," and "My Story in a Late Style of Fire" for instance, which are as good as anything I've read recently. But, and perhaps this is a very important but, I read this book after having read, in order: Garcia Lorca, Octavio Paz, Neruda, and Antonio Machado.
Thus Levis, who perhaps given other precursors might feel more free and wild to me, scanned a bit tame at times and far too narrative driven for my taste. There were several poems at the end of which I wrote something like: "end three lines earlier??? Levis winds up explaining things a bit too often at his worst. At his best, we are able to love the surgical precision of his mind, twisting and turning a problem around in his hand like inspecting a jewel.
He does this well in a poem like "Sensationalism" in which he makes up a possible story for a photographic image he's considering, but then reminds us that it could just as well be a story "turned into paper" only. But this is the beauty for Levis because he knows that the stories we make up on paper are more true than those which happened.
Thus Levis, who perhaps given other precursors might feel more free and wild to me, scanned a bit tame at times and far too narrative driven for my taste. There were several poems at the end of which I wrote something like: "end three lines earlier??? Levis winds up explaining things a bit too often at his worst. At his best, we are able to love the surgical precision of his mind, twisting and turning a problem around in his hand like inspecting a jewel.
He does this well in a poem like "Sensationalism" in which he makes up a possible story for a photographic image he's considering, but then reminds us that it could just as well be a story "turned into paper" only. But this is the beauty for Levis because he knows that the stories we make up on paper are more true than those which happened.
October 17, 2011
Came back to this book today after asking a poet-friend to look at "Adolescence" as a way to think about transitions in a narrative with multiple settings. This book feels like home to me, after so many readings. Filled with marginalia. And since it's Poem Monday I drew inspiration again from some lines. Here are a few favorites:
The trees wearing their mysterious yellow sullenness
Like party dresses.
And the quail slept perfectly, like untouched triangles.
And vines like woodwinds twisted into shapes
For playing different kinds of silence.
Ireland like a bonnet for the mad on top of
Plenty of ocean.
A sky that stays there, above
Any reason for a sky.
My only advice is not to go away
Or, go away.
I watch a warm, dry wind bothering a whole line of elms
Perhaps the ankle of a horse is holy.
Style, after all, is a kind of humor,
Something truly beneath contempt.
the soul is a canary sent
Into the mines.
Turning a green that has nothing
To do with us.
The trees wearing their mysterious yellow sullenness
Like party dresses.
And the quail slept perfectly, like untouched triangles.
And vines like woodwinds twisted into shapes
For playing different kinds of silence.
Ireland like a bonnet for the mad on top of
Plenty of ocean.
A sky that stays there, above
Any reason for a sky.
My only advice is not to go away
Or, go away.
I watch a warm, dry wind bothering a whole line of elms
Perhaps the ankle of a horse is holy.
Style, after all, is a kind of humor,
Something truly beneath contempt.
the soul is a canary sent
Into the mines.
Turning a green that has nothing
To do with us.
February 3, 2013
One interesting thing about Levis’s project is how novel-ish it is. His themes and even on occasion his voice (because of how unbroken it is, and the sort of earthy, linear progression of his ideas) feel reminiscent to fiction of me, like if Levis didn’t write poems he would have been trying to write a Great American Novel of some sort. The themes of fatherhood, country life, and the certain kind of sexuality he fixates on give me that feel as well. Of course, I don’t LIKE Great American Novels (Levis a lot of the time feels like John Updike minus the bloat), but this was pretty decent for the most part, with a few parts that were intensely well-realized.
July 13, 2011
So want to give this wonderful collection five stars, but compared to "Elegy" can't quite. Wonderful opening poems ('specially "The Cry"!!) and closing poems (the whole section "Sensationalism") but somewhere in the middle felt the energy (my energy?) lag a bit. Still, quite marvelous. Levis heightens the confessional into the visionary.
November 2, 2011
This may be my favorite book of poems--Levis's long, beautiful meditations made me want to write poems, and this book, starting with the poem "The Poet at 17" engages the speaker with his conversational voice, his lateral moving mind, and his attention to detail and craft--the attuned nature of his eye and ear.
July 28, 2008
One of THE best books of poetry of all time. I challenge you non-poetry readers out there (I've heard there are a few) to read this and still be able to say: "I just don't get poetry." Levis at his best: accessible, hilarious, master-magician extraordinaire!
June 23, 2009
Levis maintains a tone of wonder couples with unapologetic images of violence, despair and self-awareness throughout the collection. His longer poems are very adept at creating tension while still evoking a beautiful lyricism.
September 3, 2012
I loved the title poem the first time I read it, and I still do. Some of the others in the collection are not so strong. The author frequently slips into free verse, which even if it is poetry, is very difficult to pull off, and almost no one does it successfull.
June 12, 2008
One of those life-altering books that shows you what a poetic voice is capable of conveying. "Sensationalism," the title poem....so many amazing works.
August 25, 2008
Poetry
February 19, 2019
Wow. It doesn't get any better than this.
August 21, 2025
"Often, I used to say: I am this dust; or, I am this wind.
And young, I would accept that. The truth is, it was never the case.
I have seen enough dust & wind by now to know
I am a little breath that always goes the distance
Longing requires, & to know even this will fail.
The truth is, dear friends, we fall apart;
And for mysterious reasons, not entirely clear to us,
We choose to live alone. The truth is,
We do not choose, & do not fall apart. But are apart."
I loved this collection of poems. It has the great combination of being easily digestible and plainspoken yet also incredibly deep. Very nostalgic, occupied with firsts and lasts, aging, reconciling with parents after their passing. My favourite poem was "THOUGH HIS NAME IS INFINITE,
MY FATHER IS ASLEEP" which ruminates on Levis' fathers passing, and how people live on in their names. Here are the opening and closing stanzas:
"When my father disappeared,
He did not go into hiding.
In old age, he was infinite,
So where could he hide? No,
He went into his name,
He went into his name, & into
The way two words keep house,
Each syllable swept clean
Again when you say them;
That's how my father left,
And that's how my father went
Out of his house, forever."
[..]
"And then,
Before sleep, admit, also,
That his name is nothing,
Light as three syllables,
Lighter than pain or art, lighter
Than history, & tell how two words,
That mean nothing to anyone
Else, once meant a world
To you; how sometimes, even you,
In the sweep of those syllables,
Wind, crushed bone, & ashes—
Begin to live again."
The poems oscillate between feeling observant, light, homely, with a pervasive melancholy. Will have to read more Larry Levis poetry now. Feels right up my alley.
"My son is four, & curious.
That year, I had to explain
My father's death to him, & also
The idea of heaven, & how
One got there, physically, after death. Therefore,
I had to lie for the first time
To my son, & therefore I had to give him up
A little more."
September 30, 2024
PAINFUL BUT BEAUTIFUL. "My Story in a Late Style of Fire" aligns unnervingly with two of the poems that appeared in The Darkening Trapeze, "Elegy for the Infinite Wrapped in Tinfoil" and "Poem Ending with a Hotel on Fire," but the figuration of self-destruction as arson is if anything more direct and confessional in this earlier poem. I got the feeling that some headlong but doomed affair had once and for all finished off Levis's marriage, that he knew it was futile and wrong but wasn't about to stop himself, and ended up burning down his own life. I'm just guessing, of course.
That poem and the two final ones in the book would be part of any argument that Levis's work is worth reading and heeding, I think. "The Assimilation of the Gypsies" and "Sensationalism" both start from photographs by Josef Koudelka, with Levis opening the photos up into stories or screenplays that turn out to be about our relationship to time, which is mainly our relationship with death, and so we might connect these to an earlier poem in the book, "Those Graves in Rome," one of which is the grave of one whose name was writ in water...and it's all painful. But beautiful. I'm going to go see if I can recall the last stanza of "Ode on Melancholy" now. I had it memorized once. I bet Levis did too.
That poem and the two final ones in the book would be part of any argument that Levis's work is worth reading and heeding, I think. "The Assimilation of the Gypsies" and "Sensationalism" both start from photographs by Josef Koudelka, with Levis opening the photos up into stories or screenplays that turn out to be about our relationship to time, which is mainly our relationship with death, and so we might connect these to an earlier poem in the book, "Those Graves in Rome," one of which is the grave of one whose name was writ in water...and it's all painful. But beautiful. I'm going to go see if I can recall the last stanza of "Ode on Melancholy" now. I had it memorized once. I bet Levis did too.
April 19, 2023
I'm not typically a big fan of autobiographical collections. They often tend to ramble or tell the same story over and over in ways that don't catch my attention. However, Levis displays a mastery of controlling his audience's experience that is absolutely astonishing. Even with “Adolescence,” “The Cry,” and “Winter Stars,” all presented one after the other, I didn't feel like I was being dragged through someone's therapy session.
I also appreciated his chronological presentation as a reader who's more inclined to narrative than lyric poetry. Despite this, Levis was not constrained by chronology—he still wrote tense, lyric poems, likely due to the tension already present in the themes of fatherhood, marriage, and breaking ties in both.
I also appreciated his chronological presentation as a reader who's more inclined to narrative than lyric poetry. Despite this, Levis was not constrained by chronology—he still wrote tense, lyric poems, likely due to the tension already present in the themes of fatherhood, marriage, and breaking ties in both.
January 4, 2019
Finally got around to reading all of this classic collection of richly narrative poems by Larry Levis. My favorite section was Winter Stars and the titular, well-loved poem broke me as it does every time I encounter it. While I didn’t love the last couple sections of the book, I found the raw honesty and descript recollections of Levis’ earlier poems heartbreakingly wonderful. Perhaps one of the most endearing features of Levis’ work is his ability to inhabit and claim imperfect people and unglamorous histories, even his own. I will return to this collection again and again. A great collection for beginning poets to read.
January 22, 2025
These poems were so deeply resonant it made me want to start writing again, something I haven’t done since my MFA (funny how going to school to be a writer will make you not want to be a writer). I love how tender Larry was. Not all of the language in the book aged well, but you can tell Larry had a good heart, I don’t hold it against him like I do some poets.
January 26, 2021
(This guy is really great at writing about love. He writes about failed relationships (with women, with his parents), his broken marriages, deaths, and love. His images are amazing and specific, and his metaphors are original and heartbreakingly beautiful. I recommend it to everyone.
May 25, 2025
Reads as Levis still forming the incomparable voice that transports us: light in a waterfall, the shadows cast by a descending airplane's wing, his sleeping mother's body crying out in the night. Nobody makes a moment come alive like Levis, we just don't find it in every poem in this collection.
November 11, 2020
I was truly wowed by this book of narrative poems. Each poem is like a short novel with rich imagery and emotional depth.
September 23, 2021
On their lips the quick syllables of their
Language fly & darken into a few, last
Delicious phrases, arpeggios—
Language fly & darken into a few, last
Delicious phrases, arpeggios—
Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews