The Graves of Delawanna

The Graves of Delawanna is a record of trial and redemption. Miriam Levine’s impassioned poems move between the exhilaration of solitude and the poignancy of connection. These are visionary poems of the fallen world of gritty, industrial, northern New Jersey, and the silk mills of Paterson. They register the shocks of disenchantment and near-death. They also describe experiences of saving grace: unbidden, “a door of gold” appears in a vision, “molten without heat,” and somehow takes away the poet’s burden; a neighbor offers a rose, “heaps the swollen graft tip, / tenders with bent fingers.” Levine accepts the gift.

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To Know We Are Living

The poems of To Know We Are Living show super-sensitivity and resilience. Intimate expressions of connection to people and places, Miriam Levine’s lyric poems address the living and the dead: family, children, lovers, friends and admired writers. They chart the poet’s mind alive to life’s contradictions and history’s tragedy.

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