Dana Levin

Dana Levin is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Now Do You Know Where You Are (2022), a New York Times Notable Book and NPR “Book We Love.” Her first book, In the Surgical Theatre, was chosen by Louise Glück for the 1999 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize and went on to receive numerous honors, including the 2003 PEN/Osterweil Award. Copper Canyon Press brought out her second book, Wedding Day, in 2005, and in 2011 Sky Burial, which The New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Banana Palace, published in 2016, was a finalist for the Rilke Prize.

Levin’s poetry and essays have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The American Poetry Review, The Nation, and Poetry. Her fellowships and awards include those from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Witter Bynner Foundation and the Library of Congress, as well as the Lannan, Rona Jaffe, Whiting, and Guggenheim Foundations. With Adele Elise Williams, she co-edited Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master (2023) for the Unsung Masters Series.

Levin currently serves as Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Maryville University in St. Louis, where she lives.

Immigrant Song

–Dana Levin

Bitter Mother

Blue, dead, rush of mothers,
conceal your island, little star.

Trains, hands, note on a thread,
Poland’s dish of salt.

They said, The orphanlands
of America
promise you a father—

The ship’s sorrows, broken daughter,
the ocean’s dark, dug out.

Silent Father

Rain, stars, sewage in the spill,
hush the river.

In your black boat, broken snake,
you hid. You sailed

for the meritlands of America,
dumped your name in the black
water—

In the village they pushed the Rabbi
to the wall—someone
blessed the hunter.

Angry Daughter

One says No and the other
says nothing at all—

Chicago, I will live in your museums
where Europe is a picture on the wall.

Obedient Child

I concealed my island,
my little star.

In my black boat I hid.
I hid in pictures on the wall.

I said, I am here in America,
your hero, your confusion,

your disappointment after all.
They said,

How did you end up so bad
in a country this good and tall.

Published in The Nation (March 17, 2020).

Dana Levin

Immigrant Song

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