The following essay was written and read by Gregory Donovan at the 2023 Levis Reading Prize Event. 

First, I would like to take this public occasion to mention that this year we have lost a number of great and admirable poets, and among them was a departure many of us feel quite personally—the death of the poet Norman Dubie—who was an astonishing example and mentor to many poets (including me, and another, Corey mentioned today, is her), and Dubie also was a longstanding, supportive friend of Larry Levis, who we remember tonight. I can recommend Norman Dubie’s work to you with endless enthusiasm, and you’ll find he often published in our journal Blackbird.

Another longstanding and supportive friend of Larry Levis is in the audience here tonight, and I want to recognize him. David St. John knew Levis from the time they were both undergraduate students of the great Philip Levine, and David is a supremely accomplished poet who also was directly involved in the editing of the two posthumous Levis poetry collections Elegy and The Darkening Trapeze, and we wouldn’t have those books without his generous and careful efforts. In addition, he has given me permission to reveal some good news tonight—here in the library that is the repository of the papers of Larry Levis—and to announce, for the first time anywhere, that in the spring of 2025, Graywolf Press will be publishing Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems of Larry Levis, which David is now editing, and he assures us that there will be some welcome surprises in the Collected which we can anticipate. David St. John, will you please stand and accept our thanks for your work as poet and as editor.

This evening’s celebration of poetry gathers us especially to honor the striking and powerful writing of Corey Van Landingham, while it also serves as a living memorial to the brilliant poetry and enduring influence of Larry Levis. And while I cannot summon his ghost for you, it is my welcome challenge each year to invoke his presence to this occasion, and I can tell you that the spirit of Larry Levis is fully alive in the work on which I’ll focus this evening, his poem “Some Grass Along a Ditch Bank.”

Now, it’s widely recognized that among the many that could be nominated, there are two great fountainhead poets for all of North American poetry—Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. And while Dickinson is sui generis and so clearly unique and impervious to imitation that she may serve primarily as an inspiration for our meditation and awe, Walt Whitman has been directly and indirectly influential on so many poets that in a way, it’s almost not worth mentioning it, and yet I will mention it. As soon as you hear of a poem title that contains the word “grass” in it, naturally the first thing you think of is not some badly rolled joint, but that it is an allusion to Walt Whitman and his famous collection, Leaves of Grass, which praises not only the common working men and women of America, but also the interactive relationship between nature and the achievement of individual identities among all human beings.

So, it’s not surprising that in one of the best-known poetry collections by Larry Levis, Winter Stars, the poem that immediately precedes his “grass poem” that I’m focused on tonight, is Levis’s poem “Whitman,” and in it, Levis allows the present-day ghost of Whitman to speak to us, including in its two epigraphs, the first being Whitman’s statement from Democratic Vistas, “I say we had better look our nation searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease,” an injunction that definitely speaks to us in this moment of ever-increasing crises threatening democracy here at home and around the world, and the second is Whitman’s famous line from Leaves of Grass, “Look for me under your bootsoles.” That invitation is echoed by Levis in the ending to his poem, where the ghost of Whitman also speaks, we may assume, for Levis himself: “To find me now will cost you everything.”

So, at the risk of that cost, let’s look for Levis in “Some Grass Along a Ditch Bank.”

I’ll point out a few aspects of the poem to introduce it before I read it to you. The poem’s opening lines ask us to join in a kind of bemused wonderment that Levis conveys: “I don’t know what happens to grass. / But it doesn’t die, exactly. / It turns white, in winter, but stays there.” The seemingly insignificant patch of grass growing in an insignificant place stubbornly “comes back” and turns “a green that has nothing / to do with us,” since “mostly, it’s just yellow or tan” and it simply “blends in.” And even if it is sometimes “swayed by the wind,” that’s not because of “any emotion, / Or partisan stripe.” And we can say thank goodness for that. But if you tried to pull it out, you might discover that you had “misread it,” since grass will “almost appear / To fight long & well / For its right to be, & be grass.” In order to get rid of it, “you’d have to disc it under” standing on a tractor “and staring into the distance like / Somebody with a vision / In the wrong place for visions”—and after chuckling a moment over that witty phrasing, we also sense that it is Levis portraying himself there, making fun of his distractions as he worked on his father’s land, just as he has done in other poems. Nevertheless, here, as in Walt Whitman’s work, something, and someone, as unimportant as a patch of grass can be seen asserting the right to a life and to an identity. Levis, working for his father among the vineyards and orchards on the family ranch in California’s Central Valley, had often run a tractor attached to a cultivator that “combed” the dirt between “each row of vines” and he knew not only how much work and time that took, but also the hours during the rainy season that his father put in “just piecing together some puzzle / That might start up a tractor” and working to keep the rest of the farm machinery from rusting and falling apart. I’ve known about that sort of work myself, having observed my grandfather completely tear down a tractor engine and spreading all its parts over a tarp, oiling and cleaning everything, grinding the valves by hand, and then putting that puzzle all back together—since he couldn’t afford to take the machine to town and pay someone else to do it.

What could justify these hardworking people putting in so much effort and time? Why bother with taking responsibility for “owning some piece of land / That never gave up much / Without a mute argument”? And even if sometimes a field hand, or a ranch owner, or his son, could begin to feel “sympathy for grass” that he had to kill, eventually that feeling would turn into “resentment” and finally into “a variety of puzzled envy” at his allotted and lowly place in society. Larry’s father, like my grandfather, spent “half his life” or more on a tractor, and that life “went by, unnoticed,” while in the meantime, there it would be, the unwanted patch of grass coming back, and in a moment of something like magic realism in the poem, this time the patch would perversely return “in some other spot, with a different look,” almost “as if it had an idea / For a peninsula, maybe,” or it planned on taking on the shape of some land formation you might “almost / Begin to remember” from a printed map you had almost forgotten.

In the end, the poem is dedicated to “one who stayed” rather than sell out to the “subdividers” and their tract home developments, and even if it happened that you “drove past” that farmer’s place, what would you notice, since the place was like the “mailbox / At the roadside, which was incapable / Of looking any different— / More picturesque, or less common.” Even so, “the rank but still blossoming weeds” that were left “stirring a little” in the wake of your passing vehicle could be taken to represent those “common” people who worked so hard and thanklessly yet survived, those who produced food for others so they could thrive, and who put in the long hours “unnoticed.” After you left on your way and sped past, you could not see them “growing still again,” a curious phrasing that might suggest, on the one hand, the land and its workers receding into the hopeless surrender of silence, or on the other hand, it might indicate that the land, and the grass, and the one who stayed, were only slightly stirred by your passing, but soon returned to their commitment to carry on with their work with a dogged determination and defiance as they settled into an inner stillness that was a form of self-reliance, self-respect, and abiding strength.

So what do you think, is this a final scene of quiet desperation and acquiescence, or one of endurance and commitment, even in the face of not gaining fame or fortune? Could it be both? And isn’t it something like witnessing the solitary, sometimes lonely, and often underappreciated work of the writer? What is the hourly pay for a farmer, or a waitress in a diner, or the guy running the Tilt-a-Whirl at a county fair, or for a poet at work in the middle of the night creating a poem? Well, to fully discover that person at work, and to truly see that patch of grass, even if it may cost you everything, let’s seek the spirit of Larry Levis, the laborer in his father’s vineyards and the laborer in the vineyard of poetry, in this poem:

Some Grass along a Ditch Bank

I don’t know what happens to grass.
But it doesn’t die, exactly.
It turns white, in winter, but stays there,
A few yards from the ditch,
Then comes back in March,
Turning a green that has nothing
To do with us.
Mostly, it’s just yellow, or tan.
It blends in,
Swayed by the wind, maybe, but not by any emotion,
Or partisan stripe.
You can misread it, at times:
I have seen it almost appear
To fight long & well
For its right to be, & be grass, when
I tried pulling it out.
I thought I could almost sense it digging in,
Not with reproach, exactly,
But with a kind of rare tact that I miss,
Sometimes, in others.
And besides, if you really wanted it out,
You’d have to disc it under,
Standing on a shuddering Case tractor,
And staring into the distance like
Somebody with a vision
In the wrong place for visions.
With time, you’d feel silly.
And, always, it comes back:
At the end of some winter when
The sky has neither sun, nor snow,
Nor anything personal,
You’d be wary of any impulse
That seemed mostly cosmetic.
It’s all a matter of taste,
And how taste changes.
Besides, in March, the fields are wet;
The trucks & machinery won’t start,
And the blades of the disc won’t turn,
Usually, because of the rust.
That’s when you notice the grass coming back,
In some other spot, & with a different look
This time, as if it had an idea
For a peninsula, maybe, or its shape
Reclining on a map you almost
Begin to remember.
In March, my father spent hours
Just piecing together some puzzle
That might start up a tractor,
Or set the tines of a cultivator
Or spring tooth right,
And do it without paying money.
Those rows of gray earth that looked “combed,”
Between each row of vines,
And run off to the horizon
As you drive past?
You could almost say
It was almost pretty.
But this place isn’t France.
For years, they’ve made only raisins,
And a cheap, sweet wine.
And someone had to work late,
As bored as you are, probably,
But with the added headache of
Owning some piece of land
That never gave up much
Without a mute argument.
The lucky sold out to subdividers,
But this is for one who stayed,
And how, after a few years,
He even felt sympathy for grass—
Then felt that turn into a resentment
Which grew, finally, into
A variety of puzzled envy:
Turning a little grass under
With each acre,
And turning it under for miles,
While half his life, spent
On top of a tractor,
Went by, unnoticed, without feast days
Or celebrations—opening his mailbox
At the roadside which was incapable
Of looking any different—
More picturesque, or less common—
The rank but still blossoming weeds
Stirring a little, maybe,
As you drove past,
But then growing still again.

—and that . . . is the spirit of Larry Levis.

See work by this year’s Levis Prize winner Corey Van Landingham.