Levering Avenue

Levering Avenue by Robert Daseler, recipient of the 1998 Richard Wilbur Award, is a unique and powerful collection of contemporary sonnets dealing with the tragedy of human loss — specifically the loss of a beloved wife. The collection’s lyric poems stand both individually and collectively as a moving portrait and examination of the devastation of human grief. As poet and critic Robert Mezey explains, “Daseler writes of serious matters in a vigorous, plain English, and he sees things from an original and often unpredictable angle.” As with Thomas Hardy’s poems about the death of his wife, Levering Avenue renders an unforgettable, moving, and ultimately heroic confrontation with the inevitable human tragedies of loss and loneliness.