Ordinary Psalms - (Barataria Poetry) by Julia B Levine (Paperback)

About the Book

"Struggling to accept her impending blindness, the speaker in Julia B. Levine's fifth collection of poetry, "Ordinary Psalms," asks the everyday world to help her learn how to see beyond appearances into the fundamental truth of vision. As she contemplates the loss of one friend to cancer and another to suicide, along with her own visual impairment, Levine holds the world "close as I needed to see." Imagistic, lyrical, and at times imploring divine intervention from a god she does not know or trust, these poems curse and praise the extraordinary world we live in and are in danger of losing. Lamenting that "this world is a mortal affliction with wounds in the beautiful," "Ordinary Psalms" provides a seductive and lyric rumination on beauty, loss, and grief"--

Book Synopsis

Struggling to accept her impending blindness, the speaker in Julia B. Levine's fifth collection of poetry, Ordinary Psalms, asks everyday life to help her learn how to see beyond appearances into fundamental truths.

As she contemplates the loss of one friend to cancer and another to suicide, along with her own visual impairment, Levine holds the world "close as I needed / to see." Imagistic, lyrical, and at times imploring divine intervention from a god she does not know or trust, these poems curse and praise the extraordinary place we live in and are in danger of losing. Lamenting that "this world is a mortal affliction / with wounds in the beautiful," Ordinary Psalms provides a seductive and lyric rumination on radiance, loss, and grief.

Review Quotes

The speaker in Ordinary Psalms is heightened to her world of sensation even as she is losing her sight. The book never quails here, nor does it dwell. Julia B. Levine celebrates and meditates upon the simple wealth of her surroundings--the natural environment, flora, wildlife, her home, her loves, her trepidations, and her delights. These psalms rise in a single voice, but they also manifest a collective yearning to be heard. In this marvelous book, Levine succeeds in singing for us all.--Frank X. Gaspar

These poems ride on currents of elegiac lamentation as well as currents of radical joy. I admire how awake they remain to the moment, to death, to friendship and love, and to the gradual diminishment of physical sight surrounded by gorgeous earthen beauty. I admire their deeply sensual language, their abundant feeling, and their generous heart.--Joseph Millar

This is a striking collection, from its poems of memory and personal loss to its odes to friendship and the natural world. The blindness poems, in particular, are so metaphoric, magical, and mesmerizing. It's like being underwater or driving fast beside a forest of tessellating trees, a confusion of green and trunks clacking by like railroad tracks. Read on and be both lifted and saddened, read on and be dazzled.--Dorianne Laux

About the Author

Julia B. Levine is the author of four previous poetry collections, including Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight, winner of the Northern California Book Award for Poetry. She is also a recipient of the Discovery/The Nation Award and the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry from Nimrod. Her work has been widely published in journals such as Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and the Southern Review. She lives and works in Davis, California.