Publisher's Synopsis
As a drummer, Andrew Levy' s rhythmic knowledge is intimate and the work of Artifice in the Calm Damages moves across a range of percussive possibility, with its long lines and structured blocks of text providing a solid lead to the everyday madness of our sensational public life. As a frontline worker on the pedagogical front, teaching community college in the nation' s largest public urban university system, Levy' s concerns are far from the gravytrain of the poetry business as generally reflected in the ideological morass of the " profession," with its programs, prizes, and highly managed conformity. Underlying the sometimes extravagant sensory overload that is so much a part of this Artifice, Levy' s poems are ferocious in their political indignation. Exuding an all too rarely articulated sense of classconsciousness- however one reads across the theoretically dense texture of syntactical relations- these Damages are altogether necessary, and very much of our time and place. Amail Alcalay
