Surprise is a tool of a poet and great joy of a reader. Larry Levis surprises. “I’ve loved you / as a man loves an old wound / picked up in a razor fight // on a street nobody remembers. / Look at him: / even in the dark he touches it gently.” (“Wound”)

He taught at Cal-State, L.A., where I ended up in my last two years of college. I didn’t take poetry classes from him or anyone. I’m not sure I knew such things existed, even though I was an English major. I do remember one of his readings, though, and being lifted without knowing why, as if I’d had sex in my sleep.

–Sarah Sarai
found in “Larry Levis: the Graceful Surprise”