Customer Reviews

Rumor of Cortez

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Rumor Has It that Jeffrey Levine's latest book, Rumor of Cortez is headed for a cult following or wider recognition, just like in the movie biz. But this is poetry, and I have a theory. Readers like me are reading like taking some secret pleasure -- keeping the book next to the couch where they can read the poems again. It's a seductive collection. I'm captivated by the images, vivid and referent, exotic places. Whole people and historic markers have been left for us here. I am quickly falling in love with this book, as I did with his first, Mortal, Everlasting. I don't need to know everything to read these poems, I need only surrender to them. You might take a look at this book if you want inside the mind of a publisher whose literary press (Tupelo Press) is raising the bar for poetry publishers in the 5 years since its inception. But that's not really a good reason. The rumors are myriad, but the real news is this: Rumor of Cortez is full of gorgeous poems.

Here are a few of my favorite lines from "The World Dissolves":

"We fail every time at surprise.
When you lose yourself, you face south-southwest
like the caged bird.
...In the field, something licks dew from the autumn grass
before the shoots return to frost. Somewhere the sun
spends its flame, the sky shatters through its glass.
At certain hours of the day, your body floods
with instinct, so much of you having been entered."
. . .