• Woodstock Times - November 30, 2000
• The Mirror

Woodstock Times - November 30, 2000

Guru Punk
Louise Landes Levi

Poetry is first a matter of breath, The words ride on the blessings of inspiration and suspiration. Then it is a matter of dance; the words strike our ears in rhythmic patterns that move us. But breath and rhythm are not sufficient to make poetry since verse is, after all, emotionalized experience, the final ingredient in a good poem is passion—intense feeling.

There's plenty of passion in the pages of Guru Punk (Cool Grove Press)by Louise Landes Levi, formerly resident in Barrytown and Red Hook. A tiny (4 1/2 x 51/2) but mighty book, Guru Punkoffers a generous 150-page selection of Levi's work from the previous two decades—expatriate years she spent wandering in Italy, Germany, India, Holland and France before returning to New York. The poems are mystical, exultant, erotic, devotional, defiant glimpses, haiku-like into the mind and heart of a Jewish yogini poet who experiences the world in a state of exaltation, like the great 16th-century poet, Mirabai (Levi is the translator of Sweet on My Lips: The Love Poems of Mirabai.)

Poets build on the efforts of other poets. Levi pays homage in Guru Punknot only to Mirabai but to the French poet Henri Michaux, the American surrealist Philip Lamantia, Allen Ginsberg, Lynne Tillman and the female warriors of the Warsaw Ghetto, and most importantly, her Indian and Tibetan spiritual masters.

Who is Levi? She was born in New York City, lived in North India for three years, studied Indian music in Bombay and taught at Bard College, Naropa and The American College in Paris. But in an excerpt from a poem entitled “Autobiography(1984)” she gives us the real low down: “Pop artist, Jew, religious fanatic,/Dzog-chen pa, surrealist,/ was victim, nun,/ street musician/cloiud musician/attic musician/ poorly dressed/ well dressed/elegant/ nude, model behavior/ bad behavior/ telephone freak who lives without one.”

In these poems, Levi describes her quest for a lover, spiritual or physical, and her travels in search of that illusory being. In “Illusion” she can lament simply, “Of/ all the illusions,/ in this world of illusion,/ the/ most/ beautiful/ was/ that/ you/ loved/me.”

In the title poem, she asks, “Will you meet me at the door of death,/ O will you greet me at the gate of breath,/ Will you try me,/ Will you unify my sun & moon?/ O will you take me to the shining shore,/ Guru Darling, Give me more,/ Holy marriage of the mind,/ Nothing more I need to find…”

It's a rarefied level of being she aspire to, but Levi sees the real world in poems like “Letter”: “I/ miss Holland... America/ ages one, make demands/ where's your/ house, where's your car. They don't/ as about your heart./The word ‘Guru’ is a 4 letter word.…”

Like poets throughout history, Louise Landes Levi has tasted the fruits of another word that touches on our “concrete reality” at many points—a world accessible in poetry and in passion. If you're not aware of that other world, try carrying Guru Punknext to your heart.

- Michael Perkins

The Mirror

      In Guru Punk, Louise Landes Levis' newest collection of poems, Guru Punk is like original oxymoron with Guru as principle of devotion and Punk, total defiance, in this case, of conventional mind. Together they form a powerful link to primordial mind recording in ageless pursuit of Truth ordinary perceptions in noble lineage of poets writing their bliss found midst the bricolage of samasaric moments. Personally, I love Louise's quirky humor mingled with a touch of trieste and her signature self-deprecations (All my girlfriends are getting laid/& getting famous & I'm not getting/Enlightened. /I'm definitely not getting Enlightened? There would be signs/Smoke Signals/so to speak). Given everyday economics, her capacity as the quintessential 'bohemian' always amazes me-- this specially so in the era of poetry "biz" and the proliferation of MFA academic programs holding contemporary poetics hostage to an ever growing elitism. These poems are accessible to everyone from young street-wise punkers to old seasoned practitioners. I'm not surprised Guru Punk was featured in this month's Publisher's Weekly (trade publications of new books) as a prime example of micropublishing. Once again, thanks to Cool Grove Press, after 30 years, her distinctive work is finally making its way to a broader audience and she is receiving the appreciation she deserves. Here's a poem, poet Allen Ginsberg greatly enjoyed, and one he quoted back to me after hearing her first read it at the Naropa Institute. 

	"13"

 She
        must have been
a
 Dakini,
  She
       could not
have
       been
    Real,
       the
     blond -haired lady,
hitchhiking with her
                          13
                             valises
       to
             Rome.
      At the center of each poem is devotion to Guru principle with characteristic centrefugal impact of lost love memories, snippets of overheard conversation, amusing commentary such as in "13," observations on the subway, at an ATM machine, from 'on the road'-- a myriad luminous details revealing themselves in the force of her energetic field. "The L," (an overhead subway line in NYC) is a poem, which can be read equally by the uninitiated and initiated on many levels--an interesting play of discursive mind noticing itself moving and the moment of coming back to recognition.


The L
PERFECTION IS NOT BY ACCIDENT

& the air is better here/Queens borough
    plaza /  not far from "the Street
       where you live"/ not R.
 de Niro/  but YOU,

      Gazing out
              at the red, white & blue
        (triangular) flags, flapping, in
           the wind/symbol for me, of
                          the

                                 "state,"

               Manhattan in the distance,
             Suddenly/    the train, arrives.
     Her sense of poetics is always steeped, as it were, in a modernist brew of concrete imagist language which, when spoken from the vantage of the Dzogchen view, Integrates with the vivid world of sex, rock and roll, and the urban experience much like ancient poet-practitioners of old accomplished from the brothels and beer halls of a teeming metropolis. Traditionally, such environs are antithetical to the spiritual path but for practitioners who can maintain the proper view such stimuli serves to awaken one's sensibilities and compassion. One last poem in this tradition.

  MEDITATION

  I
      suppose I really
         should be out defending
human rights somewhere/feeding
     the hungry (apart from my
          street offerings to the
             homeless people),

       somehow improving the
     condition of the world/ but
then, it's not such a bad thing, after-
    all, to take a peaceful walk down
          14th Street, in NYC, listen-
             ing to the way the people
                 talk here & looking
                           around,

 "THIS YEAR I'M GONNA HIT
         ST. VALENTINES DAY
                      WITH A PASSION"

                            he said on
                              Avenue

           A
- Jacqueline Gens