The Graves of Delawanna
The Graves of Delawanna
Miriam Levine
1981
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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.
Select Poems from The Graves of Delawanna
Praise For Miriam Levine’s Writing
“Miriam Levine, as her family used to say, was ‘born with a mouthpiece’, by which the forever-dying world is turned into artful speech and made to live again . . . wonderful.”
“. . . sentences so nearly perfect that they take your breath away.”
“Levine’s poems are organic wholes, strange, beautiful creatures.”
“. . . ghostly vision, guts, and candor . . . splendid.”
“Particularly perceptive and engaging.”
“. . . dazzling . . . indelible and hauntingly real.”
“. . . wonderfully lyrical . . . deep-feeling and well-crafted.”
“Riveting.”
“Miriam Levine is a wonderful and wise writer.”