Leza Lowitz's poems cross datelines, cultures and histories. With remarkable ease she combines moments of intense personal reflection and memory with insights into settings and events which have loomed over our century. These poems, placed in Key West, Chiapas, San Francisco, Berlin, Kyoto, Okinawa and Tokyo, are filled with unexpected gifts--the smell of rice cakes baking in tiny kitchens on the streets of Tokyo, a limbless toy soldier washed up on a beach in Okinawa, stones from a trout's belly piled "on the edge of the rough blue plate like a blessing in the rain." Lowitz's poems are like passionate letters from a traveler awake not only to what is around her but to the forces of nature and history which brought the present world to light.--Paul Bailiff, Creative Writing Department, San Francisco State University
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
A first collection by poet Leza Lowitz, the first book by a new publisher in Berkeley, and for both, an auspicious beginning. Most of these poems are set in foreign countries, especially in Japan where Lowitz was a journalist and a translator...Exotic places only intensify the daily tensions between delight and discomfort, belonging and exile...Yet in her poems there are moments, always, of a kind of stubborn transcendence. "Old Ways to Fold New Paper" is an edgy, profound and skillful witness to that cleft between how we wish things were, and how they truly are. -- Pacific Sun, April 1997
Leza Lowitz's first book of poems succeeds beautifully in linking a series of widely ranging poems with a sustained impulse, a persistent concern with the moral and ethical dimensions of what she examines....A distinguished debut, leading to pleasurable anticipation of new work from both author and publisher. -- San Francisco Review, "Debuts of the Year," January 1997
The freshness of these delicate, dense, sometimes mysterious, often political poems comes from the poet's extraordinary willingness to look. They are poems of perception--in all the senses of the word. Objective poetry. Yet at the same time, Lowitz's poetry is filled with stories that follow you like a persistent wound. Her poems haunt, stay with the mind, like the trough of history they cannot, will not, evade. Intelligent, edgy, these poems command attention. -- Jack Foley, "Cover to Cover," KPFA Radio, Berkeley
These poems plumb many depths of Japanese life and culture and the particular ways in which a foreigner intersects with these. This is a book which vibrates with an energetic curiosity, a book of searching questions. Whether the setting is familiar to exotic, Lowitz's desire to explore what is universal in human experience allows any reader to travel these rich territories, share in her discoveries, and perhaps experience revelations of his or her own. "Old Ways to Fold New Paper"will be the book I give as a special gift to anyone I know who is either moving to Japan or living here already -- The Japan Times, August 1997
Leza Lowitz's first book of poems succeeds beautifully in linking a series of widely ranging poems with a sustained impulse, a persistent concern with the moral and ethical dimensions of what she examines....A distinguished debut, leading to pleasurable anticipation of new work from both author and publisher. -- San Francisco Review, "Debuts of the Year," January 1997
The freshness of these delicate, dense, sometimes mysterious, often political poems comes from the poet's extraordinary willingness to look. They are poems of perception--in all the senses of the word. Objective poetry. Yet at the same time, Lowitz's poetry is filled with stories that follow you like a persistent wound. Her poems haunt, stay with the mind, like the trough of history they cannot, will not, evade. Intelligent, edgy, these poems command attention. -- Jack Foley, "Cover to Cover," KPFA Radio, Berkeley
These poems plumb many depths of Japanese life and culture and the particular ways in which a foreigner intersects with these. This is a book which vibrates with an energetic curiosity, a book of searching questions. Whether the setting is familiar to exotic, Lowitz's desire to explore what is universal in human experience allows any reader to travel these rich territories, share in her discoveries, and perhaps experience revelations of his or her own. "Old Ways to Fold New Paper"will be the book I give as a special gift to anyone I know who is either moving to Japan or living here already -- The Japan Times, August 1997
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning Language and Brutal Honesty,
By A Customer
This review is from: Old Ways to Fold New Paper (Paperback)
...typify this poet's work. Without sentimentality, she travels to a very personal place and makes it universal; makes it matter. Whether it be a poem about a lover, politics, an ancient place and its resonances, or the evocation of a memory, Lowitz brings her gift to bear without pretense or self-consciousness. This is a poet to watch and to listen to. Her poems haunt and elucidate, they teach and inspire. Old Ways to Fold New Paper is a revelation. I return to it time and again.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fine sensitivity to detail,
By A Customer
This review is from: Old Ways to Fold New Paper (Paperback)
Leza Lowitz writes poetry that is never self-conscious, always full of grace and simplicity, with just the right dosage of details. And the details are evocative, their landscapes of Japan, of childhood, of womanhood. I look forward to her future work, and further travel with this gifted poet.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
So THIS is poetry.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Old Ways to Fold New Paper (Paperback)
As someone who doesn't really like or "get" poetry in general, I found Leza Lowitz's //Old Ways to Fold/New Paper/// to be a revelation. The poems have a tremendous power that seems to have to do mainly with the poet's voice--there is something about the rhythm of the lines and the honesty of the sentiments that makes it seem as if the words are emerging straight from the unconscious. Pictures are painted in my mind that make me feel as if I'm actually experiencing what the poet describes. I find myself thinking, "so THIS is poetry," and taking the time to read other contemporary poets--but without really finding, as yet, anyone else who conveys that quality to me. I will keep trying, however, and hope to see more of Ms. Lowitz's work in the future--she may make a poetry lover out of me yet.
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