Larry Levis

Larry Levis was born the son of a grape grower; he grew up driving a tractor, picking grapes, and pruning vines in Selma, California, a small fruit-growing town in the San Joaquin Valley. He later wrote of the farm, the vineyards, and the Mexican migrant workers that he worked alongside. He also remembered hanging out in the local billiards parlor on Selma's East Front Street, across from the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks.

Levis earned a bachelor's degree from Fresno State College in 1968, where he studied under Philip Levine. For Levine's classes and poetry workshops, Levis completed many of the poems that would appear in his first book of poems, Wrecking Crew (1972). Levine and Levis formed a lifelong friendship that would, for each of them, leave an indelible mark on their writing and on their art. Both of them continued to exchange poems for critique and consultation, either by mail or in person, during the rest of Levis's life. Levine would go on to edit Levis's posthumously published 1997 volume, Elegy.

Next, Levis completed a master's degree from Syracuse University in 1970, where he studied under the guidance of poet Donald Justice. One of Levis's classmates at that time, poet Stephen Dunn, has written about their 1969-70 experience at Syracuse:

"We had come to study with Philip Booth, Donald Justice, W.D. Snodgrass, George P. Elliott, arguably the best group of writer-teachers that existed at the time."[5]

Finally, Levis earned his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1974. While at Iowa, he renewed his friendship with David St. John, whom he'd first met at Fresno State when both had taken classes with Levine. St John would later edit two of Levis's posthumous publications: The Selected Levis (2000), and The Darkening Trapeze (2016).[6] In his foreword to Elegy, Levine acknowledged St John's guidance while editing that volume for publication in 1997.

Levis taught English at the University of Missouri from 1974–1980. From 1980 to 1992, he taught at the creative writing program at the University of Utah.[6] He was co-editor of Missouri Review, from 1977 to 1980.[7] He also taught at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. Levis was a Fulbright Lecturer in Yugloslavia in 1988.[8]

From 1992 until his death from a heart attack in 1996 he was a professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University,[3] which annually awards the Levis Reading Prize in his remembrance (articles about Levis and the prize are featured each year in Blackbird, an online journal of literature and the arts).

Levis was married three times. His second wife was Marcia Southwick, a fellow poet, whom he married on March 15, 1975. David St. John served as best man.[2] Together the couple had a son, Nicholas Southwick Levis (b.1978). They were together for 10 years, until their marriage ended in divorce. Southwick later married Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, in 1992.