Bright Root, Dark Root

Review "Peter Levitt's exceptional authority as a poet has been earned by a persisiting care and endurance. He comes from the familiar chaos of gang fights and urban despair to a center he has had many times to lose in order to find again, the "Light" of the moving A Book Of Light, the closing sequence of this masterful collection. When poems can speak as variously and as clearly as these, when one has so cared and learned to value the life given, then the music itself sounds the honor of our common dance. Bright Root, Dark Root is the music of survival." --Robert Creeley "In the presence of a poet who has been given and who has accepted the sacred duty of bringing the poem into the world, there is the bare, but sufficient, intimation of the very beginning, of the marvel and heartbreak of creation. Such a poet is Peter Levitt and such a book is Bright Root, Dark Root. There is great beauty in this book. Beauty is at the heart of it, at that place, Tepheret, where the Kabbalists tell us spirit and form meet, where men and women are holy together and where, as these poems indicate, light becomes body and body becomes light. All the mystical texts, which Levitt knows so well--Hebrew, Greek, Buddhist-- speak of the moment and injunction: Let there be light. And here there is that light. Peter Levitt understands the necessity and risk of carrying it and offers it to us, with tenderness, for these dark times." --Deena Metzger -- About the AuthorAll Things Rise, Transparent Be Prepared The Beautiful Particulars Birth At Winter River The Boat Born To Die The Bow Budding The Cry The Daughters Talk To Me Dying Season Even So The Faithless Caballo Green Sonnet A Hasid Poet Heron Homage: Leda As Virgin How Big If The Population Decides To Die If We Must Speak Then In The Chinese Post Card It Is A Native Soil Japanese Maple Maybe Two The Measure Mother You Will Die The Name Of Birds Of Brilliant Kind The Fierce Outstetched The Branches Under Para Nicaragua The Path Is Master The Potter Red Camelia Reply To Lethe The Return Reversal Is The Movement Of The Tao Sister Lotus, Sister Flame Some Times This Shore The Tryst The Turn Undiminished The Wedding The Wedding When The World Of Its Own -- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®