Joan Aleshire: Larry Levis – The Perfection of Solitude (July 2000)

Joan Aleshire examines two of Larry Levis’ long poems, “The Perfection of Solitude” and “Caravaggio, Swirl and Vortex,” focusing on the relationship between “The Perfection of Solitude” and jazz music. Like the music it invokes, Aleshire argues, this poem explores cultural mythologies about the United States, as well as the impulse toward solitude and its consequences; and like the music, she suggests, it doesn’t find a way out of the “wilderness” that pain can be, but does find “a voice for it.”