Now Do You Know Where You Are

Written between the dawn and dusk of the Trump presidency, Levin’s luminous latest (after Banana Palace) reckons with the disorientation of contemporary America. In these poems, things are falling apart: “Metabolic system, financial system, political system, ecosystem—/ [...] And everywhere [...] the oracular feint of a joke future.” These poems oscillate between hope and despair: “Maybe,” Levin writes, “was about all that I could muster––on the question of whether this world.../ will flourish.” Through the fog of doubt, Levin summons ferocious intellect and musters hard-won clairvoyance. From telling the story of her own birth, to her sessions with an osteopath who calls himself an “Incarnation Specialist,” to grief over putting down a beloved cat, to her reflections on the history of the world––“every empire that ever/ rose and fell spread out on discs [...] like/ records spinning—all playing the same song”—she writes with profound self-awareness, spinning experience into meditations on how to exist. The answer is uncertain, but this terrific book will ground readers in the art of questioning, even as the ground quakes. (Apr.)