An Anthology of Rain Poems

Phillis Levin's much-anticipated sixth collection, An Anthology of Rain, is a stunning series of poems immersed in time while acknowledging "How it is / Is not how it is / It keeps changing." Yet the fleeting presence of so much in this lyrical collection is what the reader is gifted. In poem after poem, memories are stirred to become as palpable as the present in this poet's keen imagining. Even a remembered duel of roses between friends and across languages is itself a cause for delight, as is the vision of a father returned to life to assuage the poet's grief. Light and water are the twin elements that course through these poems, whether it be the "[b]lighted light" of a leaf turning inearly fall, or the "orb of light" (a water droplet caught in her father's hair) that entranced the poet as an infant, or the drop of rain in the brilliant title poem, "An Anthology of Rain" that invites the reader to follow its movement and receive the rain that "receives you." Such a spirit of reciprocity between poet and reader animates this collection and is a poignant reminder of what the best poems offer: that thrilling sense of immediacy even in the face of flux.