The Ribbon Around the Bomb

With an unflinching imagination, Levine inhabits and gives voice to some of the best minds of past generations. These intimate yet dramatic monologues, steeped in human tribulation, resonate with insight and compassion.

--John Parras, author of Dangerous Limbs/ editor of Map Literary

Elizabeth Levine's poems are passionate and unforgettable explorations of a woman artist's life and psyche.

--Maria Mazziotti Gillan, American Book Award, Director, Poetry Center, Passaic

Community College

Turning a blaring light on sex, motherhood, regret, loss, Levine takes off. Where one language fails, another intervenes, until poem after poem she is beating all her wings. ​

--Professor Martha Witt, Author of As Broken As Things Are

In her debut book of poems The Ribbon Around the Bomb, Elizabeth Levine proves herself a poet of exceptional grace with a natural gift of both lyricism and psychological insight. Her poems that explore the suicides of some of our most beloved poets (including Sylvia Plath, Hart Crane, Randall Jarrell) are highlights of this book as she skillfully weaves fact and imagination to arrive at a greater emotional truth. The title poem alone is worth the price of this compelling book.

--Laura Boss, author of The Best Lover (NYQ); editor of Lips

And so we though we knew them. After all, what their poems did not reveal, surely their biographers must have shared with us. But Levine, daring and defying presumption, and spirit-like, enters them, talks through them, each and everyone, to us. This is well the first and the last time you shall hear them before, transformed, you return to those precious poems you left behind.

--Professor Frank Niccoleti, Wight Foundation

Elizabeth's work takes her reader's to church in a desert of red sand. She feeds you her Spanish like the red wine and the skin of Chirst her speaker gets on line for again, and again, with the visceral clarity of a dusty machete that cuts into you life an unknown truth. She also borrows beautifully from a reg e gaines workshop.

--Dimitri Reyes, Rutgers Newark MFA