Levine, Mark 1965- (Mark Avri Levine)

PERSONAL:

Born April 17, 1965.

CAREER:

Poet.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Poetry Series award, 1992, for Debt.

WRITINGS:

Debt (poetry), Morrow (New York, NY), 1993.

Enola Gay (poetry), University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2000.

The Wilds, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2006.

F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century (nonfiction), Miramax (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Poet Mark Levine's collection Debt looks at the uglier side of society and casts a surreal picture in which an unnamed "I" is set against an unsavory "them," including capitalism and tyrannical bosses. The oppression of the individual is emphasized at the expense of large and nameless institutions and trends in society. Other subjects addressed include desire, debt, sin, anti-Semitism, cruelty, and lies. According to Library Journal contributor Christine Stenstrom, Levine's language is "purposefully hostile and does not flow beautifully, which adds to the appropriate harshness of the poems." One poem reads: "I am an ice machine. / I am an alp. / I stuff myself in the refrigerator / wrapped in newsprint. With salt in my heart / I stay good for days." Stenstrom gave Levine credit for tackling subjects that hint at the darker sides of today's society. But a Publishers Weekly reviewer claimed that the author does not appropriately justify the anger of the poems. The writing, the critic asserted, is "over-wrought but unproved." Booklist contributor Donna Seaman found the poems to be subtle and effective reflections of contemporary times; she compared Levine's technique to something presented in powerful and painful "bursts and gulps" akin to picking at a wound. The book won a poetry award in 1992.

Enola Gay, Levine's next volume of poetry, was published in 2000. It is the first of three proposed books of poetry in a new series from the University of California Press. The poems have a dark, serious tone, as would be expected of works in a book with a title referring to the airplane that dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. In a review for Salon.com, Melanie Rehak remarked that the works in the collection "bear a sense of having struggled up from beneath great pressure to reach the page. It's not that the writing seems labored; rather, the words feel as if they've come to be bound together gradually." References are made to death, to horsemen of the apocalypse, and to other dark images, such as cold heavens, rain, and surrender. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly commented that "the book as a whole is a kind of triumph."

The Wilds contains a series of poems that, ironically enough, question language and whether we can trust the power of words to represent experiences. Words take on varied meanings in these poems, shifting from line to line to illustrate how tenuous they can be, how unreliable. For instance, in the first work in the collection, "Ontario," beauty is both subject and object: "Beauty, dipped / in resin beneath its shag / was always ready with the right / curse to recite to / our nature. It is / in us, it is." Lily Brown remarked in Octopus that the offerings in this volume "interrogate human nature and upset ideas of our place in the natural world." Where previously he addressed the evils of the world and humanity, in these poems Levine takes an equally dark look at the environment and the ways in which mankind causes destruction through its very existence. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted, however, that despite the dark imagery, "Levine finds in this grim confusion not just style but panache." Library Journal critic Ilya Kaminsky praised Levine's lyric detail, but added that his poetry "is most interesting when it leans away from musings on grammar toward emotional maturity."

In F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century Levine turns away from poetry in favor of nonfiction, chronicling the devastation of a series of storms that struck in the Limestone Country, Alabama, area in 1974. The poet eschews the details of the storm fronts themselves in order to concentrate on the chaos and the effects on people's lives. A Kirkus Reviews contributor found the book to be "a dramatic reminder that a once-in-a-lifetime tornado can last a lifetime for its survivors." A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that the author "has the descriptive prowess to bring the tornados to vivid existence on the page." Booklist critic David Pitt called it a "well-written and engaging book."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 1993, Donna Seaman, review of Debt, p. 1670; May 15, 2007, David Pitt, review of F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century, p. 7.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2007, review of F5.

Library Journal, May 1, 1993, Christine Stenstrom, review of Debt, p. 90; March 1, 2006, Ilya Kaminsky, review of The Wilds, p. 92.

Publishers Weekly, April 26, 1993, review of Debt, p. 69; April 24, 2000, review of Enola Gay, p. 83; February 20, 2006, review of The Wilds, p. 137; March 12, 2007, review of F5.

ONLINE

Bookslut,http://www.bookslut.com/ (September 1, 2007), Elizabeth Holden, review of F5.

Octopus Online,http://www.octopusmagazine.com/ (December 31, 2007), Lily Brown, review of The Wilds.

Salon.com,http://www.salon.com/ (May 30, 2000), Melanie Rehak, review of Enola Gay.