Background
She grew up in Baltimore, Maryland.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
book
Once I Gazed at You in Wonder: Poems (Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets) by Jan Heller Levi (1999-03-01)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01F9QRN54/?tag=2022091-20
Once I Gazed At You In Wonder: Poems (Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets)
( Alice Fulton, the judge for the 1998 Walt Whitman Award...)
Alice Fulton, the judge for the 1998 Walt Whitman Award, calls Once I Gazed at You in Wonder “quite simply, the most endearing book I’ve read in some time.” Readers of this audacious and, yes, endearing collection will agree. Jan Heller Levi has said that her poems are not confessions but conversations. Here, then, are her conversations with the world. What sets Levi apart, however, is that she lets the world answer back. Difficult fathers, ineffectual mothers are forgiven; ex-lovers are blessed. Sophisticated but never jaded, this poet looks in wonder beyond the self: a cup of coffee in one of New York’s ubiquitous Greek diners can launch Levi into a meditation on truth versus compassion; a suite of elegies for her mother takes us from a hospital corridor to the studio of a television talk show where God is the guest; a poetry reading in which she shares the stage with a folk singer illustrates Levi’s gift for illuminating the absurd textures of late-twentieth-century existence. Don’t you have any happy poems? he wondered. Don’t you have any cancer songs? I asked. With the narrative drive of great fiction, the consolations of philosophy, and the rigor of art, Once I Gazed at You in Wonder marks the entrance of a much-needed new voice and vision in the conversation that is American poetry.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080712365X/?tag=2022091-20
January Levi
Edit ProfileCareer
Prior to teaching at Hunter College, Levi also taught at Sarah Lawrence College and the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City. In a review of Once I Gazed at You in Wonder, poet Alice Fulton writes,
“January Heller Levi"s work countervails the implications of this curmudgeonly koan with passional, self-critical intelligence. Ardent yet free of gush, the spontaneity and conversational ease of her poems assure that the quality of wonder, like that of mercy, is not strained.
In addition to unguardedness and heart, there is backtalk—bite and edge, lip and lash.”.
Achievements
Works
book
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Once I Gazed At You In Wonder: Poems (Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets)
( Alice Fulton, the judge for the 1998 Walt Whitman Award...)
- Once I Gazed at You in Wonder: Poems (Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets) by Jan Heller Levi (1999-03-01)
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Once I Gazed At You In Wonder: Poems (Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets)
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Born
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Nationality
United States
Awards
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the George Bogin Memorial Award; Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award; Walt Whitman Award
Named after poet Walt Whitman, the award is based on a competition of book-length poetry manuscripts by American poets who have not yet published a bookNamed after poet Walt Whitman, the award is based on a competition of book-length poetry manuscripts by American poets who have not yet published a book