I finished Winter Stars in a big committed moment night before last. I guess all I need to do is get halfway through a book of poetry (that’s
exactly where I was) and then I can finish the whole rest in a sitting, even if
it takes me days to get to the mid-point. (And with Winter Stars, it did.)
CONTEXT: This book was recommended to me by a boy in my
college poetry workshops who I had far too big of a crush on and which he never
either understood or deserved.
THOUGHTS: Levis writes really long poems, and really long
poems can be hard for me. That’s why it took me so long to get halfway. I only
picked it up last night and put some real time in because I was afraid I
wouldn't meet my Jan 14th deadline. Surprise! (OK guys, technically I wrote this review yesterday and just didn't post it til today. I'm sorry. I'm a liar.) Anyway, most of his
poems are at least 2 (book) pages long. The book is also divided into sections,
which confused me at first because I was wondering if it was a collection and
the poems in each section came from books of his poems named with the name of
the section. (This makes sense, I promise.) But no, apparently the “chapters”
is just a Levis thing. There’s a lot I really liked about these poems, some of
them were funny while sad, some of the imagery is really good and surprisingly.
However, I don’t know, maybe I don’t have the patience for it, but I really feel
like Levis needs to learn how to write shorter poems. I think long poems can be
good and can be funny, but right now I write a ton of long poems and I feel
like I need to get back to writing short poems as well. I think versatility is
important. While Levis is impressive he's not versatile.
But what does that say really? Maybe he's just found a technique that works for him. That could also be wise, I guess, find your strengths and plumb them. However, I admit, if all of Levis' poems are very long poems, it's more alienating for me than not.
NEXT: Don't know. Don't have my books with me. I'm thinking either "Elegies" by Rukeyser or "Elegy Owed" by Hicok or whatever the 3rd elegy book was that I asked for for Christmas.
DUE: 1/28/2015, bitch
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