Phillis Levin was born and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, and educated at Sarah Lawrence College and The Johns Hopkins University. She is currently a professor of English and the Poet-in-Residence at Hofstra University.
More By This Poet
An Anthology of Rain
For this you may see no need,
You may think my aim
Dead set on something
Devoid of conceivable value:
An Anthology of Rain,
A collection of voices
Telling someone somewhere
What it means to follow a drop
Traveling to its final place of rest.
But do consider this...
Cloud Fishing
To fish from a cloud in the sky
You must find a comfortable spot,
Spend a day looking down
Patiently, clear-sighted.
Peer at your ceiling:
Where a light dangles, hook & line
Could be slipping through.
Under the hull of a boat
A fish will see things this...
Lenten Song
That the dead are real to us
Cannot be denied,
That the living are more real
When they are dead
Terrifies, that the dead can rise
As the living do is possible
Is possible to surmise,
But all the stars cannot come near
All we meet...