Ordinary Psalms

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

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

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