Description: To Miriam Levine, "devotion" implies love and self-creation; to her mother's generation, it meant martyrdom and self-denial. The domain of this memoir is the interval between those attitudes. Devotion is the expression of a sensibility that trusts the physical--a facet of women's existence that is at once ennobling and primary, transcendent and spiritual. Affirming her deep connection to people, Levine draws from a rich expanse of memories, misgivings, epiphanies, and associations to tell of the adventures and dangers of her emergence as a woman writer.
Brief description: MIRIAM LEVINE is the author of four poetry collections, most recently The Dark Opens, winner of the 2007 Autumn House Poetry Prize. She is also the author of a novel, In Paterson, and A Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.
Review Quotes: Devotion is a compelling coming-of-age story. It enfolds the reader just as a good novel does. In her absorbing memoir, Miriam Levine has also written the intellectual and artistic history of a woman. There is a natural assumption in her book that the materials of a woman's life count, matter--and are as representative of American life and thoughts as a man's. Devotion belongs, with Wordsworth's Prelude, to those works of personal history which document 'the growth of the poet's mind.' The mind, this time, belongs to a woman.--Patricia Hampl