Temples and Fields

 

The University of Georgia Press (November 1988)
Clothbound Edition: ISBN 0-8203-1052-2 / Paperback Edition: ISBN 0-8203-1053-0

Winner of the Poetry Society of America's
Norma Farber First Book Award

Purchase: Amazon / IndieBound

PRAISE

"Informed by an extraordinary combination of knowledge, imaginative power and mastery both of diction and rhythm . . . This book provided deep and enlightening pleasure."

—John Hollander (Judge, Norma Farber First Book Award)

"A lost age of gold haunts these deft and intense poems. At their best they show us how to claim it for our own."

—James Merrill

"Temples and Fields has any number of finely constructed ideas, sanctuaries for this poet’s devoted intelligence—and all around them stretches an inviting expanse of natural detail. As we move among Phillis Levin’s cool, stately, fluted lines, their marble miraculously 'embeds . . . its igneous past, / Being made of what it was not.' We emerge refreshed, believing, grateful."

—J. D. McClatchy

"Over the surface of these poems the play of light and shadow is traced with steely delicacy, and yet they’re big-hearted and tough-minded poems. Their maker is already an accomplished stylist, and too mature to show off her formidable skills; instead, she uses them. . . . Phillis Levin’s debut should be met with gratitude."

—William Matthews

"Her fierce intellect sanctifies the brilliant architecture of these poems with a promise of love."

—Molly Peacock

"There is strength and authority in this book, so much sheer intelligence and craft it is a virtual certainty that these centered poems will anchor hard, determined, and important ones to come."

—Dick Allen, The Hudson Review