Bright Root, Dark Root

"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 Author

All 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®