To Miriam Levine, "devotion" implies love and self-creation; to her mother's generation, it meant martyrdom and self-denial. The domain of this memoir is the interval between those attitudes. Devotion is the expression of a sensibility that trusts the physical-a facet of women's existence that is at once ennobling and primary, transcendent and spiritual. Affirming her deep connection to people, Levine draws from a rich expanse of memories, misgivings, epiphanies, and associations to tell of the adventures and dangers of her emergence as a woman writer.

About the Author

MIRIAM LEVINE is the author of four poetry collections, most recently The Dark Opens, winner of the 2007 Autumn House Poetry Prize. She is also the author of a novel, In Paterson, and A Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.

Reviews

Graceful tales that make ordinary life extraordinary . . . made of sentences so nearly perfect that they take your breath away.

* Boston Sunday Globe *

Creates a gallery of portraits with ghostly vision, guts, and candor . . . Devotion is a splendid book-it will not only make you embrace the author and her family, warts and all, but will awaken and redeem your own memories.

* Jewish Community News *

Devotion is a compelling coming-of-age story. It enfolds the reader just as a good novel does. In her absorbing memoir, Miriam Levine has also written the intellectual and artistic history of a woman. There is a natural assumption in her book that the materials of a woman's life count, matter-and are as representative of American life and thoughts as a man's. Devotion belongs, with Wordsworth's Prelude, to those works of personal history which document 'the growth of the poet's mind.' The mind, this time, belongs to a woman.

-- Patricia Hampl



Book Information
ISBN 9780820339863
Author Miriam Levine
Format Paperback
Page Count 252
Imprint University of Georgia Press
Publisher University of Georgia Press
Weight(grams) 340g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 14mm