Available now: When Performers Swim, The Dice Are Cast by Judy Katz-Levine

 When Performers Swim, The Dice Are Cast  (Press Release) (101.79 KB)

Judy Katz-Levine was born in Newark, New Jersey into a musical family. She graduated from Simmons College. Katz-Levine audited a course at M.I.T. with Denise Levertov, who was a great influence on her work. She has published two full-length collections of poetry—"When The Arms Of Our Dreams Embrace/Collected Poems" (SARU, 1991) and "Ocarina" (Tarsier/SARU, 2006). Her poems have appeared in "The Sun", "Fence", "Mother Jones", "Salamander", "The Plaza" (Japan)", "Origin 2008", "96 Inc.", "Istanbul Literary Review", "The Bitter Oleander", and myriad other magazines. She won a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry, and her poem "What I Didn't Know" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Judy Katz-Levine is intensely influenced by jazz rhythms in her work, and by surrealist and expressionist poets and painters. She also has mystical leanings, and has gleaned much from the poems of Tagore, the stories of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, and the "Tales Of The Chassidim" by Martin Buber.

Also a jazz flutist, Judy Katz-Levine sings in a choir, and lives with her husband, an acupuncturist and sax player.

About "Ocarina", Judy Katz-Levine's last book

"Almost every poem seems to work at the intersection of multiple planes. They offer the reader, who allows them to work their magic, a rich, rewarding experience. Many of the poems are a swirl of images tied to the ground by the thinnest of threads, others are firmly rooted, some even burrowing into subterranean places...There are so many moving poems in this collection, some that uplift the spirit, others that embrace sadness, and loss."
            —Mark Pawlak, editor of Hanging Loose, author of "Official Versions"

"stunningly visual and rythmic"
            —Debbie Spingarn, Norwood Bulletin

"Simplicity and a sense of the divine in everyday, are... hallmarks of...Judy Katz-Levine's poetry...Dreams, music, references to mystical Judaism, and the arts all imbue the daily with a sense of transcendence. Even at the supermarket..."
            —Miriam Sagan, Santa Fe New Mexican