Who is Larry Levis

Larry Patrick Levis (September 30, 1946 – May 8, 1996) was an American poet.

Life and work

Youth and education

Larry Levis was born the son of a grape grower; he grew up driving a tractor, picking grapes, and pruning vines in Selma, California, a small fruit-growing town in the San Joaquin Valley. He later wrote of the farm, the vineyards, and the Mexican migrant workers that he worked alongside. He also remembered hanging out in the local billiards parlor on Selma's East Front Street, across from the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks.

Levis earned a bachelor's degree from Fresno State College in 1968, where he studied under Philip Levine. For Levine's classes and poetry workshops, Levis completed many of the poems that would appear in his...
Read Full Biography

---

Larry Levis Poems

• As It Begins With A Brush Stroke On A Snare Drum
  The plaza was so still in that moment two years ago that
  everything was clear,
  As if it had been preserved beneath a kind of lacquered
  stillness, &, for a while, ...
• Elegy With A Chimneysweep Falling Inside It
  Those twenty-six letters filling the blackboard
  Compose the dark, compose
  The illiterate summer sky & its stars as they appear
  ...
• Anastasia & Sandman
  The brow of a horse in that moment when
  The horse is drinking water so deeply from a trough
  It seems to inhale the water, is holy.
  ...
• Elegy With A Bridle In Its Hand
  One was a bay cowhorse from Piedra & the other was a washed out palomino
  And both stood at the rail of the corral & both went on aging
  In each effortless tail swish, the flies rising, then congregating again
  ...
• Childhood Ideogram
  I lay my head sideways on the desk,
  My fingers interlocked under my cheekbones,
  My eyes closed. It was a three-room schoolhouse,
  White, with a small bell tower, an oak tree. ...

Read All Poems

---

Larry Levis Quotes

Read All Quotes

---

Comments about Larry Levis

• Kathapollitt: poem of the day: larry levis, "elegy with a darkening trapeze inside it."
• Poemakontsa: she glints she is like the screen flickering in an empty movie house far into the night. - larry levis, l.a., loiterings
• Poemakontsa: i have just been ax-murdered by a larry levis beginning of spring poem on the first glimpse of rhododendrons
• Poemakontsa: a larry levis on writing poetry the spider even the dark spider shines, tears at its belly and moves sideways a little on its web, swaying, while my hand on this pencil knows nothing, moves back and forth, takes hold of things, is never sorry
• Poemakontsa: stunning, moving larry levis signs if there were messages or signs, i might hear now a voice tell me to walk forever, to ask the mold for pardon, and one by one i would hear out my sins, hear they are not important - that i am part of this rain drumming its long fingers

Read All Comments