Banana Palace

Dana Levin

Banana Palace confronts the deep anxieties of our age with bemusement, incredulity, outrage, and hope. Observing the crisis of human appetite through the lenses of psychology and science fiction, Levin shows herself disquieted at a world “ruled by a bipolar father-god, unconscious, suicidal.”

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ISBN: 9781556595059

Format: Paperback

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from “Across the Sea”

We wanted arrival to be instant
because we didn’t want to be separate
                  from what we loved.

Wireless, weightless, and omniscient is how we
refined our machines—

We had a dream

that we could smash the bans
of matter and time and
                  still be alive—

Was that the soul, wishing

we would invent the body
out of existence,
                  so many of us now

                  enthralled by doom…

The students peer so deep into their handheld screens they
                  look like Diviners.

Each one
                  a scrying Sibyl at the world’s

end—
                  scribbled-on leaves thrown out of their caves

                  and into the wind—

The only part of the Epic
I make them read, just after
                  the crew is borne ashore, but before

                  the walk amongst the dead—

The part between.

Where there’s a body, agonized by light.

                  And someone lost.

                  And a query—

About the Author

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. Her first book, In the Surgical Theatre, was chosen by Louise Glück for the 1999 APR/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 …

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Reviews

“Reading a Dana Levin poem is a bit like spelunking into a cave of golden light in which there is a reverse disco ball that turns in synch to the beat of your heart.” —Kenyon Review

“Utterly her own, and utterly riveting.” —New Yorker

“… In rereading the book the necessity and relevance of Levin’s imagined apocalypses becomes immediately clear… Without letting us off the hook for the damage we do to each other and the world around us, Levin is able to look at the world we make with astonishment and awe, insistent on remaining alert to beauty.” —The Rumpus