Now Do You Know Where You Are

by Dana Levin

“Levin’s luminous latest reckons with the disorientation of contemporary America. . . . Through the fog of doubt, Levin summons ferocious intellect and musters hard-won clairvoyance.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Dana Levin’s fifth collection is a brave and perceptive companion, walking with the reader through the disorientations of personal and collective transformation. Now Do You Know Where You Are investigates how great change calls the soul out of the old lyric, “to be a messenger―to record whatever wanted to stream through.” Levin works in a variety of forms, calling on beloveds and ancestors, great thinkers and religions―convened by Levin’s own spun-of-light wisdom and intellectual hospitality―balancing clear-eyed forensics of the past with vatic knowledge of the future. “So many bodies a soul has to press personal, familial, regional, national, global, planetary, cosmic― // ‘Now do you know where you are?’”

“Dana Levin is the modern-day master of the em-dash.”—New York Times Magazine



"The book weaves in and out of prose, and it’s no wonder that the haibun is the generative form in these pages. A form invented by Basho so that he could move from the prose of his travelogues to the quick intensities of haiku, back and forth. Emily Dickinson does the same thing in her letters. And because this is a poet of the western United States—born outside of Los Angeles and raised in the Mojave, then two decades in Santa Fe, now in middle America, St. Louis—maybe it’s right to think of her work in terms of storm   if the prose is an anvil cloud, the flash of poetry at the end is lightning.”—Jesse Nathan, McSweeney’s  

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

87 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 19, 2022

About the author

Dana Levin is the author of “Now Do You Know Where You Are,” a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Previous books include "Banana Palace," "Sky Burial," "Wedding Day" and "In the Surgical Theatre," which received nearly every award available to first books and emerging poets. The Los Angeles Times says of her work, "Dana Levin's poems are extravagant...her mind keeps making unexpected connections and the poems push beyond convention...they surprise us." About Sky Burial The New Yorker writes: "Sky Burial brings a wealth of rituals and lore from various strains of Buddhism, as well as Mesoamerican and other spiritual traditions, but the intensity and seriousness and openness of her investigations make Levin’s use of this material utterly her own, and utterly riveting." Levin has won the Rona Jaffe Writers Award, the Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Reviews

[Anna Evans Eklund · Rating 4 out of 5]

My feelings about this one are complicated.

It was written - and reflects on - the very early days of Trump's presidency. As such, it's a perfect representation and interrogation of those times. And we need those. This also means that reading this book is exhausting (for very good reasons). Some readers may need a little more time before tackling.

Levin also interrogates childhood illness, the impacts of which ripple outward into her adult life. Her explorations are necessary, and a welcome addition to the canon of poets writing about the body and its struggle with the spirit (something soaring yoked to something weighted). As a reader with a chronic illness, these poems reverberated within me, and it was so, so welcome to see them on the page.

Because of both of these elements, this book requires some effort on the part of the reader. This is not to discourage anyone from reading this book, because it has a lot to say and is also comforting in how it represents the shared anguishes and anxieties of those who watched 2017 unfold with horror. I do recommend you proceed with gentleness toward yourself as you enter, and grace with yourself as you continue.

[Kim Lockhart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry isn't for everyone, not even poetry judged to be good.
Even people who live and breathe for poetry, who only feel alive in the presence of good poetry, know this to be true.
I am not qualified to judge, so all I can do is report my experience.
This particular collection seems to be steeped in a resigned kind of death, without enough depth of reflection.
I'm moved by the poet's pain, but not by the words, or even the spaces between them, though I looked there, too.

[Rochelle Jewel Shapiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

seeded with clues like a mystery

So many references that echo through the poems. The book is passionate and intimate. When I got to the end, I wished for more.

[Scott Wiggerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some very powerful poems (and prose pieces) in this collection, written during the pandemic. "Why / choose the past / as the future" she asks, a theme that repeats throughout the book, which also presents "personal, familial, regional, national, global, planetary, cosmic" philosophical issues--from birth through the present. One of the central prose pieces, "Appointment," dealing with musculoskeletal problems, probably covers all these areas.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant wayfinding for the soul.

[Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐
I don't know...

First, I love the title; it was such a great hook that got me interested. But, then, I got started...and I don't know.
I think some of the poems are quite good, and I appreciate the themes Dana Levin includes, however I just don't know if her style is for me. It might come just come down to taste, so I won't discourage from reading this work, but I just felt alright about the whole thing.

[H]

loved the first poem especially—throughout, the longer poems do such incredible work creative narrative even within the decidedly lyric.

i’m trying a new experiment where i read one book at a time and try to read it more mindfully, not flitting away to something else so often. dear book, thank you for suffering my hands, i don’t think my attention is very good, but i did enjoy having you.

[Leiris · Rating 5 out of 5]

"
... to hear first poems about earth and sex and blood and stars, about the great focus and the dispossessed, parents, harms, and the Boot of the State, why, I thought, do any of us do any of this, because (and then verse came, such as it was):

I was here, I
lived in it, I
died in it, this shit

Paradiso --
"

-from 'For the Poets'

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unexpected and treasured mirror in the midst of this dumpster fire of a world.

[Annie Sand · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some poets are at their absolute best when ablaze with political fury. Levin is not one of them. Love her other work.

[Salty Swift · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horrors of trump's time in the White House are interspersed with Dana Levin's personal observations. The retelling of her childhood illness is so personal and intimate, the reader's heart shatters into little piece. More than poetry, this collection is pure brilliance.

[Maia Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, vulnerable, such interesting, varied structure. 12/10 no notes.

[J. Coates · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems feel like Dana Levin wrote them on a napkin and they came out perfect on the first try. I know that's not how it actually works, but they just came off as effortless. Genius stuff here.

[MixterCharlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. The authors different tones in the different poems- some short and pointed and some paragraph style prose- all built into a full book. The way she weaves history and present and future present to create a full view of society and people and place really pulled this book together for me.

[Lizet · Rating 5 out of 5]

A set of essays that showcase the moment of tension between expectation and reality. This is one of my first poetry books that dealt with topics such as generational trauma and disillusion. I find myself going back and seeing more depth every time.

[Tauwan Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dana Levin’s collection here is wonderfully meditative and centered. Both plain spoken and beautifully poetic in equal measure. ‘Twas a pleasure reading this grounded, and timely work.

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved this. The ones about her cat especially but all of it was really lovely.

[Sara Cunningham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the prose & journalistic poems , did wish there were more lineated poems only bc the ones that were here were SO GOOD.

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was very hit-or-miss for me, but also my first experience of Dana Levin. Some connections were instant, while others needed more time. Then I'd read four or six pages where nothing resonated. This is headed for the library store, where I hope it will make another reader very happy.

What struck a chord:

"before the vigilance of my genderdoom kicked in"

"Thinking again, as I always do, about body and soul. How they infuse each other. How they hate each other. How most people pledge allegiance to one or the other. How painful it was! To be such a split creature --"

"Was it a shock to you, the afterlife? Where no one was a king in a White body --"

"I prayed to be a messenger -- to record whatever wanted to stream through, regardless of it being met with failure, silence, or star --"

"it was the opposite of grief's black milk --"

"Each of us, by nature, a killer -- Each of us, by nature, picking something to practice mercy on --"

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another striking and original book by Levin, one that I think is only fitfully interested in being poetry, but I kind of don't care.... It's a record of a time in a poet's life, and here, that time is a transition between living in NM and moving to St Louis. When I was reading it, in MO, my wife was visiting her friend in NM, so that kept me engaged. There's politics here, though they seemed somehow less apocalyptic than those in _Banana Palace_, if that's possible. This is the book the deals with the election of Trump and the period after, which made this book feel weirdly dated, but not in a terrible way-- it just added to that sense of a time capsule, one that comes after one book and precedes another.... There's a striking and memorable interest in natural health here, via chiropractice (is that the word?). Really, a brilliant book but one that is, by design, provisional

[Cynthia Arrieu-King · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some very tight docu poetics volumes of poetry out there, some enduringly prescient ones that anticipate all were going through. Given this poet's status within the poetry hierarchy, i think I expected the lineation to be tighter, and references to be more apt or salient, but it truly feels often like notes, and some very loose ideas. Somewhere around a third of the way through it starts to hit some humorous and brilliant notes. It feels as.if everything from 2020 onward gave this person lease to write about race, gender, environment etc., but perhaps in a way that didn't simmer very long. This is an impression, and the time period is certainly a.tough one in which to pen anything.

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

it was fine. i feel like poetry can be so subjective. reading this in 2024 was a certain experience, that maybe would have been different had i read it in 2022, or maybe will be different reading it 30 years from now, as a reflection on a period of time 2016-2020, from THE election to the start of the pandemic. i wonder how much poetry will be written about trump. about the pandemic. certainly an important time to commit to paper, and poetry helps us make sense of it.

my favorite poems were: No, Maybe, Your Empty Bowl

my starred/underlined passage that sticks out is also the one chosen to be on the back cover:
and from this vantage History/ looks like a choice, and I have to ask, now, in the present/ tense, Why/ choose the past/ as the future--

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems (and long prose) poems written early in Trump's presidency that focus on live, survival, friendship, the end of times, and grief.

from You Will Never Get Death / Out of Your System: "How old is the earth? I asked my machine, and it said: Five great extinctions, one in process, four and a half billions years. // It has always been very busy on Earth: so much coming and going! The terror and the hope ribboning through that."

from Maybe: "was all about that I could muster—on the question / of whether this world, which I prefer to think of in the past // tense, will flourish—though the first of the last fires hasn't even / started yet—has it?"

from For the Poets: "if only three people like a tweet does anything you offer sound in the forest?"

[Gigi · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5⭐️

i did a presentation on this book for my poetry capstone course and i love, love, loved it. the way Levin so artfully combines prose with poetry, allusions with her emotions, history and current events, her own uncertainty with change, is something that i find beautiful and fascinating. my university is hosting her in april and i’m so excited to listen to her speak, because there is a breadth of knowledge that i would just like even the smallest crumb of. i’d recommend this poetry collection to anyone, even the ones who think they don’t like poetry; her prose poems are digestible but still thought-provoking and are easily accessible by new poetry readers.

[Linda]

It was ChatGPT that recommended this book of poetry when I asked it what other poets I might be interested in if I liked Rae Armantrout. In the end, I do not think this poetry is much like Rae's work, but, I liked this collection okay. It's only in the back jacket copy that it says outright the poems were all written between 2016-2020 (it was published in 2022) but the content often shows the outrage and frustration of living through Trump 1.0. Yes and here we are again. I liked parts of this quite a bit ("Pledge," "Two Autumns: St. Louis").

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed reading experience for me. There were several prose sections that did not resonate with me. They felt more like journal entries.

Quote (not formatted)

I didn't know. As with
so many things:
there was fact and there was
a believed-in dream (3)

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The tone was very clear, but it was not a tone that I could tolerate for 84 pages. I was left wanting more poetry in the poetry. I scoured pages for any lines that rang out with musicality or iamge or figurative language.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't really a fan of the more journal/prose ones.

[Nav · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag.

[vienna · Rating 3 out of 5]

fine