Mark Pawlak’s memoir My Deniversity: Knowing Denise Levertov is now available from MadHat Press, Amazon, and selected independent bookstores.
About the book
Much more than the story of Mark Pawlak’s apprenticeship to a major poet (Denise Levertov), My Deniversity is a brilliant and delightful introduction to what it means to commit one’s self to Poetry, capital P. Guided by Levertov, aspiring physicist Mark Pawlak turned himself into an important American poet and co-editor of Hanging Loose, one of the country’s longest lived and most influential literary presses. Open-hearted, witty, and genuinely instructive, the book is simultaneously a reminiscence, a social history of a singular period in American letters, and an insider’s guide to the craft. My Deniversity belongs on the shelf alongside Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and Pound’s ABC of Reading.
—Askold Melnyczuk, author of The Man Who Would Not Bow, founder of Agni.
In the current issue of Arrowsmith (#17), What Rhymes with Afghanistan?, Pawlak reflects on the relevance of poems written at the start of the Afghan War and its echoes of the Vietnam debacle. To read more of his work, click here.
Mark Pawlak is the author of nine poetry collections and the editor of six anthologies. His latest book is Reconnaissance: New and Selected Poems and Poetic Journals (Hanging Loose). His work has been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, and Polish. My Deniversity: Knowing Denise Levertov, a memoir, is forthcoming in 2021 from MadHat Press.