POET, Louise Landes Levi due to read December 8, 2007 at the Hooker-Duhnam Theater

Here are a few recent online resources for the work of Louise Landes Levi who is scheduled to read at the Hooker-Duhnam Theater on December 8 at 7:00 PM.

Hooker Duhnam Theater
139 Main Street
Brattleboro, VT

The reading is followed by a reception and book signing
Free to the public with donations accepted

The following article on The Poetics of Prayer was published in
Big Bridge

An Introduction

The vocabularies of Prayer include an entire range of human expression, dance, design, dramaturgy, art, architecture &, of course the spoken word. Preserved since antiquity, the metaphysical & aesthetic qualities in Indian Dance , Tibetan Sand Paintings, Islamic calligraphy seem as vital to us now as they were 1000 years ago.

As poet & translator my preoccupation or 'dharma' has been with the spoken & written word. Experience in esoteric schools of learning attuned me , in particular, to the vocabularies & methods of 'transmission'. The resonance of prayer in ancient tongue 'Hebrew resonated through my childhood imbuing it with a sense of the primordial.

I hope the following article will serve to illustrate what I feel to be the inner, outer & secret methods of prayer & the way esoteric & esoteric culture maintain our human link to the non-dual or contemplative state.

Introduction to Guru Punk

Toward Totality (Vers la Completude) by Henri Michaux with translations by Louise Landes Levi with an introduction in Milk Magazine

Seven Poems in Otolith

More poems online at mtdmagazine

Banana Baby posted on Big Bridge

The Highway Queen with an interview



To read my article about Louise in Italy (photo above) go to my personal blog, Poetrymind.

LOUISE LANDES LEVI has translated & written books, published chap books, broadsides & cards, / played sarangi in concert halls, in radio stations in town squares & railroad stations for some decades & perhaps for some lives.

Overland journeys to India produced several interpretive translations/ one of Rene Daumal ( the great Sanskrit autodidact & author of well known Mt. Analogue) RASA originally printed by New Directions (1982), now available through Siva Stan, the other, of the legendary poet genius Mira Bai whose devotion to Krishna freed her entirely. SWEET ON MY LIPS was published by Cool Grove Press in 1997 & reprinted in 2003 w. an introductory essay by La Monte Young.

In a strange twist of fate, much of Ms. Levi’s own work was thrown away by a concierge (or divine agent) in Paris, 1977. Henri Michaux, known for his eremitism & anonymity, nurtured our author through this crisis. A generous selection of LLL’s translation from HM, plus an essay on her meeting with him can be found on line at www.milkmag.com. Forthcoming fr. Coronamundi, a large selection of the work. Towards Totality, 2005.

Ms. Levi studied at the Univ. of Calif, played with Daniel Moore’s early fusion orchestra The Floating Lotus Magic Opera company, then traveled East, for more instruction. Please refer to www.coolgrove.com (Guru Punk & Sweet on My Lips/author interview) for details.



Her poetry books include early chap books: Poems Ambrosial Press, Bombay, 1972, The Water Mirror (Het Water Spiegel) the Amsterdam School (tranls. B. Mohr) 1983, Amiata, Felix Mansingh, Amsterdam 1984, Departure, Guus Bauer, Amsterdam, 1986 and Concerto, Accordian Series, 7, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1988, Extinction, Left Hand Books, Barrytown 1990 & 1992, The Tower, Il Bagatto, Amsterdam, 1994, The Highway Queen, PBP, Amsterdam & Vienna, 1994, Le Lampade di Casa Sono State Acesse, MA, tranls. Rita Degli Esposti, Supernova, Venice 1996 & 2000, Guru Punk, Cool Grove Press, Brooklyn, 1999, Chorma, transl. Sibila Rigori Porto dei Santi, Loiana 2000, Avenue A & Ninth Street, Shiva Stan Kathmandu-Woodstock, 2004, Ma’ Kar A Kar/MA, Univ. of Rhode Island, Providence, 2005 & forthcoming Crazy Louise, Felix Mansingh, Amsterdam 2005.

LLL is known to be peripatetic & shy. Please contact her for any publications that are as difficult to find as she is at: levitate108@hotmail.com

Since 1992 she has directed Il Bagatto Books, printing occasional chapbooks, broadsides & postcards. The press originated in Arcidosso, Italy & travels w. her. It is co-sponsored by Ms. Sofia Bentinck.

On Sweet on my Lips

"Mirabai's spiritual vision and poetic genius shine through these pages. Verses of wounded pathos and soaring ecstasy are rendered here as vividly as if they had been spoken yesterday, yet with the incantatory power of sacred text. Levi's translations, brilliant in their lucidity, usher the reader directly into the heart of Mira's rare, impassioned devotion."
-Miranda Shaw. Author of Passionate Enlightenment.

"The West has St. Teresa d'Avila - the East has Mirabai. Whosoever understands them both understands all there is to understand."
- Claudio Rugafiori

"These poems of Mirabai have been beautifully translated from the Middle Hindi by Louise Landes Levi, and they should serve as a fine key to this tantric poet's consciousness. "
-Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"What makes these translations of Mirabai so remarkable is not so much this simpatico recognition among poets across time and space, but that for the first time these poems are rendered in the context of their original transmissions by one who is herself an initiate, tantric practitioner, and acarya of poetics. "
-Jacqueline Gens, extracted from The Mirror

On Guru Punk

Tracing a road that runs from Milarepa to Michaux, from Isabelle Eberhardt to Jack Kerouac, Ms. Levi, author of little known classics such as The Highway Queen and The Water Mirror, offers a compilation of spiritual experimentation & 'ordinary' road adventure. Here musical genre, iconoclasm & itinerancy mix as we observe the author's devotional impulse
"Louise is Sarasvati, goddess of poetry."
- John Giorno, Giorno Poetry Systems

"Louise Landes Levi's Guru Punk is sex in the city light years delivered from tv usa's yuppie mortification. the fast breath of punk and the endless flow of buddha. like passing beauty in the subway. it's there, it's gone, it's there again."
-Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth

Fall/Winter Reading Series at the Hooker-Duhnam Theater

Where out of town poets join regional and local poets for a reading series in downtown Brattleboro on the first Saturday of every month.

Place: Hooker-Duhnam Theater
139 Main Street
Brattleboro, VT

Time: 7:00 PM Reception to follow
Free

Confirmed Dates:

November 3, 2007
Regie O'Hare Gibson & Chard deNiord

Boston poet/performer Regie O'Hare Gibson will join Chard deNiord of Putney in a lively reading and performance. While no two poets would seem as different aesthetically as Regie and Chard, both speakers are masters of the ecstatic mode of the revelatory that navigates ordinary realities toward a purity of language and depth of feeling even in these dark times.

Poet, songwriter, author, workshop facilitator, and educator Regie Gibson has performed, taught, and lectured at schools, universities, theaters and various other venues on two continents and in seven countries. Most recently in Havana Cuba. Regie and his work appear in the New Line Cinema film love jones, based largely on events in his life. The poem entitled "Brother to the Night (A Blues for Nina)" appears on the movie soundtrack and is performed by the film's star, Larenz Tate. Regie performed "Hey Nappyhead" in the film with world-renowned percussionist and composer Kahil El Zabar, composer of the score for the musical The Lion King.

Regie has personally worked with: Gwendolyn Brooks (Poet Laureate of Illinois & Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry.), The Last Poets, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Roy Ayers, Fareed Haque, Kurt Vonnegut, David Amram (Composed music & collaborated with Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg.), Harold Levi, The Monks of the Drepong Gamong Monastery, members of the world famous AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), Mos Def (Hip Hop artist), David Murray (Saxophonist with Miles Davis.), Sterling Plumpp (Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. & an author), Marc Smith (creator of the international (Poetry Slam phenomenon), Patricia Smith (3 time individual National Poetry Slam champ, columnist & author.), Reg E. Gaines (Writer of 3Bring On The Noise, Bring On The Funk2 with Savion Glover.), and many other artist in musical genres including World, Celtic, Hip Hop, Jazz, Funk, Blues, Salsa, Andelusian, East Indian, House, and European Classical.

Regie has taught, lectured and facilitated workshops for: the Cambridge Poetry Festival at Harvard University, the Poetry Center of the Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Black Writers Guild, Inside Out of Detroit, MI, University of Chicago Lab School, Northwestern University, Roosevelt University, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Eastern Michigan University, National Louis University, Washtenaw State College, Youth Speaks of San Francisco, CA, University Without Walls of San Antonio, TX, as a Chernin Center for the Arts Community Writers Fellow, a writer in residence at the Effi O. Ellis Center sponsored through National Louis University, and for public schools systems throughout the States of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, California, Rhode Island, and Philadelphia. Regie is the 1998 National Poetry Slam Individual Champion, was selected one of Chicago Tribune's Artist of the Year for Excellence (1998) for his poetry, will co-judge the Chicago Sun-Times 2001 Poetry Competition with Marc Smith (Creator of the international (Poetry Slam phenomenon.) and Mark Strand (University of Chicago professor & 1999 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry), and is regularly featured on National Public Radio.


Regie has toured with the Chicago Mask Ensemble, performing dramatic and poetic adaptations of common myths from around the world. Co-produced the play "The Mystery of Fire Bread" with Frau Marianne Buchwald, while performing in Europe with the Sharnier Theater in the cities of Hanover, Frankfurt, Berlin, and the Literature Haus in Hamburg, Germany. Performed at the Night of Sacred Music in Chicago. His original works of poetry have been dramatized and scored by classical flautist and professor Janet Misurell Mitchell and produced and directed by Eric Rosen for the Steppenwolf Theater's Words on Fire production.

In 1999 Regie performed for the award-winning Traffic Series at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater where Regie adapted the work of Kurt Vonnegut. Mr. Vonnegut was in attendance, and raved about the eloquence with which his work was rendered. "When you perform, you are supersonic and in the stratosphere where you can see the Earth really as a ball, moist, blue-green. You sing and chant for all of us. Nobody gets left out." -- Kurt Vonnegut

In 1999 Regie founded the Church of The Funky Word, a literary and musical arts ensemble utilizing ancient, contemporary and original literary text combined with world music and rituals from various world cultures.

Regie is widely published in anthologies, magazines and journals, such as Power Lines, An Anthology of Poetry along with three Pulitzer-Prize winning poets Gwendolyn Brooks, Yosef Komunyakaa, and Lisel Mueller, his first full-length book of poetry Storms Beneath The Skin (EM Press) was released in 2001. www.em-press.com

Chard deNiord is the author of three books of poetry, Asleep in the Fire (University of Alabama Press, 1990), Sharp Golden Thorn (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003) and Night Mowing, (University of Pittsburgh Pres, 2005). His poems and essays have appeared recently in The American Scholar, The New England Review, Gettysburg Review, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Poetry, The Iowa Review, Poetry East, Agni, Green Mountains Review, The Harvard Review, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares and The Kenyon Review. He is an associate professor of English at Providence College and is the founder and former program director of the low residency MFA Program in Poetry at New England College.


December 8, 2007
Louise Landes Levi

International poet, classical sarangi musician, scholar, and translator of Rene Daumal and Henri Michaux, Louise Landes Levi has traveled the globe for three decades. Her poetry books include, Banana Baby (Supernova, 2006), Avenue A & 9th Street (Shivastan, 2004), Chorma (Porto dei Santi, 2000) Guru Punk, (Cool Grove Press, 1999), Sweet on my Lips, Love poems of Mira Bai (Cool Grove Press, 1997), The House Lamps Have Been Lit (Supernova, 1996), Extinctions, (Left Hand Books, 1993), and Concerto, (City Lights, Accordian Series, 1988). Rene Daumal’s Rasa was published by New Directions in 1982 and most recently, Toward Totality (Vers La Completude) & Selected Works 1929-1973 of Henri Michaux (Shivastan, 2006) and Toward Totality I / Vers La Completude (Longhouse, 2006). Reviews, essays and poems have been published online in Big Bridge, Jacket, and Rain Taxi, among other publications.