danalevinpoet

@danalevinpoet.bsky.social

5 books of poetry, Copper Canyon Press. Brain disturber at Maryville U in St. Louis, Bennington Writing Seminars, and a location near you. Essaying, book forthcoming 2027 Graywolf Press—

Walz says Harris "would have been a fantastic president... we wouldn't wake up every day to a bunch of shit on TV. We would wake up to an adult w/ compassion & dignity doing the work, not a manchild crying about whatever is wrong with him. May his fat ankles find something today. Petty as hell."

Writing in resistance to the State is one kind of activism; writing about anything else is another. You don’t know what might help someone—what might meet a reader’s fear, grief, rage, confusion. It might be a poem about snow or shoes or the confessing mirror. Poetry is an endurance technology.

The invention of social media is going to wind up being like the invention of the printing press in reverse. The Enlightenment collapses. Liberal democracy ends. Everyone becomes sick and stupid.

As my bro-in-law & nephew were fleeing Pacific Palisades, they saw an Amazon guy delivering packages. They were like, dude! You need to leave! I can’t tell if that guy was heroic or clueless, but it doesn’t matter now! Everything‘s ash.

Sometimes you publish a poem you feel ambivalent about, and as years go on, you feel ambivalent about it always. Why did you publish it? Because it wanted to live, despite your doubt. And you will just have to sit with your ambivalence while the poem goes on and has a life.

I will talk to you from the body. I will talk to you from the lyric heart. Can’t forget those, though the shocks and worries will come fast and furious. If you are afraid today, one way to activate the vagus nerve and bring calm into the body is to sing or chant. No prescription required.

adjectives to describe the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization: homicidal suicidal sociopathic cruel irresponsible delusional geocidal regressive self-defeating embarrassing catastrophic irrational satanic ugly

"The cigarette, like your life, is a piece of chalk that shrinks as it tries to explain." --Bert Meyers, fr. "After the Meal." BERT MEYERS ON THE LIFE & WORK OF AN AMERICAN MASTER." Ed. Dana Levin & Adele Elise Williams. I love discovering a poet new to me. The UNSUNG MASTERS series is wonderful.