Watching Bees by Michael H. Levin

Michael H. Levin‘s new chapbook Watching Bees, bears witness to what is to be human. The impulse to reach across the generations with family and friends, our relationship with nature in forms as diverse as volcanos and bees, the atrocities we suffer and those we inflict — all of these, in Mr. Levin’s hands, are opportunities for reflection and insight. Watching Bees satisfies Frost’s notion that poetry is a way of remembering what it would impoverish us to forget — a high bar, which this chapbook meets with grace and elegance.

–Roderick (Rick) Bates, Editor, Rat’s Ass Review

Michael Levin is not only a keen observer — of bees and campfires, sepia-tinged photographs, food-stained recipes.  He has an uncanny ability to infiltrate deep recesses of feeling. Whether he’s channeling a chorus-line dancer facing the terror of “a faithless knee” or a scientist witnessing the first atomic test, his varied voices cut to the core – and the soul.

–Karen Lyon, Editor, “Poetry on the Hill,” Capitol Hill Rag

In Watching Bees Michael Levin invites us on a journey through the human condition that (to quote another of his poems) flashes “silver-coin flickers of hope.”  From Shakespeare to Stalin, Greek mythology to Judaism, the poems in his fourth collection inhabit dozens of lives with keen observation and meticulous language. Whether exploring nature or moments from his personal life, the experience is vivid, immediate, and more than momentary.

–Jonathan Lewis, Editor, The Federal Poet; Author, Babel On (2017)