The Wilds

New California Poetry

by Mark Levine, Robert Hass (Series Editor), Brenda Hillman (Series Editor)

In his third book of poems, Mark Levine continues his exploration of the rhythms and forms of memory. The Wilds is set in the border regions between natural and cultivated states, childhood and adulthood, past and present. "We were boys," says the speaker of the opening poem, "boyish, almost girls./Left alone on the roof, we would have dwindled." Austere and lyrical, the music of these poems resonates with echoes of poetic tradition-Wyatt, Jonson, Milton, Eliot-yet is singularly modern.

Genres: Poetry

76 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 2006

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

[Gabriel Congdon · Rating 5 out of 5]

F-f-f-f-f-f-fuck yeah!
I know I always write that. It's my way of bringing some cock-n-bull to the poetry corner. It's crude, sure, but I'm pounding the table so people look in wondering the rumpus is.
Hey I agree with one of the other reviewers, it took me a second to get into this collection but once I was there, my tears were spring ready. Ol Marky-Mary says something like

Whirling in windlessnes.
A cloud sheltered you,

And I'm done in. I'm up bliss creek with wings for paddles.
And that's what poetry in its classical contemporary mold does best. Here I am, a maze of forts, more shield than not, I spend all days filtering and blocking things out, and yet, a handful of words somehow has a picture-perfect head-shot at my innermost heart. It's like being spoken to in a much needed way, not to drub poetry alone as innocuous comfort, but it does that section of its job damn well. It's something to do with thought itself, eh?, that poetry-with-a-clapper alone can converse with the everbabbling I of ones mind.

Finally, I'd like to thank the sponsors of this review, Dutch Treat. Coming in with a THC of 28% with efflorescent citrus tones, Dutch Treat. I can't review poetry on Goodreads without sniff of that Dutch Treat. So treat yourself to some Dutch Treat.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

nice book!

i learned i liked the booooook

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard not to keep hoping that Mark Levine writes a book as good or better than Debt. And it may not be fair to hold him to that standard. This book is exceptional, and it creates and observes landscapes, and the people in them, using a speaker who is more present, and solicitous of the reader to feel what he is feeling. But there isn't that urgency that drove Debt.

[Sara]

I like this book. It grew on me more the further in I read, making me wonder if I was in a dead mood when I started it. I will return to it, setting aside my vigorous preference for Debt. The Wilds got me thinking and excited.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Childlike and kinda scary. Very much in line with the poetics of the child prophet. Everyone else likes Enola Gay best. I say their aesthetic is much too adult.

[Caroline-manring · Rating 4 out of 5]

Takes a lot of patience but it's there