Description

In These Voices

by Sherri Levine

A collection of voice poems, In These Voices, allows us to peek inside the lives of a variety of characters. Levine, through the magic of language, embodies a jilted lover, a worried husband, a young woman, a son, a granddaughter and even a squirrel.

About the Author

Sherri Levine lives in Portland, Oregon where she teaches English as a Second Language to adult immigrants and refugees at Portland Community College and Portland State University. Her work has been published in The Timberline Review, Hartskill Review, VoiceCatcher: A Journal of Women’s Voices & Visions, Verseweavers, Perspectives Magazine, The Poeming Pigeon, and The Sun Magazine. She won First Prize (Poet’s Choice) in the Oregon Poetry Association’s Biannual Contest (2017). Sherri recently served as Poetry Editor for VoiceCatcher. She escaped the long harsh winters of upstate New York and has ever since been happily soaking in the Oregon rain.

What They’re Saying…

Sherri Levine’s debut, In These Voices, deals in the charms and quirks of language, the vagaries of love and loss, and the confusions and wonders of life going by. It is a wise, delightful collection.

~ Joe Wilkins, author of When We Were Birds,
winner of the 2017 Oregon Book Award in Poetry

From the first, brilliant poem to the last, tender one, In These Voices is a surprising joy ride. Sherri Levine’s cast of characters range from “Girl,” who “steps out / of the subway /in her shimmy / shine short shorts / shoe-fly / halter tie / crop top . . .,” to the child of “The Greatest Jewish Cowboy” who says to him in a prose poem, “. . .please hold me in your coat, keep me warm, pull me close so I can whisper I love you in your ear.” In “I Ate a Raymond Carver,” Levine asks, “If I ate you, Raymond Carver, / would I write like you?” The answer is Yes. She, too, is a “Master of minimalism, / carving and chiseling / characters . . .”

The book closes with a beautiful, lyrical poem, “There is Poetry in These Rooms.” Gratefully, her reader responds, “There is poetry in this book!”

~ Pat Schneider, author of Writing Alone and With Others
and How the Light Gets In

Sherri Levine’s poems are full of captivating words and images with just the right amount of sparseness. They are about being a child and being an adult; about romances and heartbreaks; about the parents we remember and who they’ve become; about students and truck drivers and cowboys and squirrels. But ultimately, these poems are all about love.

~ Alida Thacher, Co-Founder, PDX Writers

Sherri Levine’s poems transport the reader not just to another place in time, but to a different state of mind. Each of her voices puts you right behind their eyes, lets you feel the bath water chilling around an aging body or the hula hoop spinning around a pair of strong young thighs. Thoughtful, lyrical and totally unique, I keep going back for more.

~ Thea Constantine, author of Stumptown