Red Emma’s

The poetry of Larry Levis increasingly occupies a legendary place of reverence among poets and readers—the spell of his reputation only continuing to widen in the thirty years since his death. From the briefer lyrics and deep image-making of his early books to the long sequences and operatic narratives of his last works, Levis’s poems have an unmistakable signature, a way of expressing the sweep of history, perception, and heartbreak. Over his career, his poetic lines broadened to accommodate the cinematic aperture of his observations on American empire, poverty, landscape, migrant workers, political violence, addiction, and art. Levis’s expansive poems came to resemble the interconnecting patterns just discernible in the eddies of a stream or the leaves circling in a wind.

Swirl & Vortex at last makes all of Levis’s poetry available in one definitive volume. This collection includes the five books published in Levis’s lifetime, a brilliant reconfiguration of Levis’s posthumous books, and unpublished late poems, edited and with an afterword by David St. John. To trace Levis’s poetic development into his extraordinary “late style of fire”—cut short by his early death—is one of the singular experiences in contemporary poetry. Swirl & Vortex is an essential collection by one of the great poets of the end of the twentieth century, and a transformative work spiraling out toward our future.

Andrés Cerpa is the author of three books of poetry, Bicycle in a Ransacked City: An Elegy (2019), The Vault (2021), which was celebrated as one of the best poetry books of 2021 by The New York Times, and The Palace (2026) which is forthcoming from Alice James Books. He is an educator and faculty member of the Randolph MFA Program.

Devon Walker-Figueroa is the author of Lazarus Species (Milkweed Editions, 2025) and Philomath (Milkweed Editions, 2021), which was a National Poetry Series selection, a winner of the Levis Reading Prize, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. An assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, Devon’s work can be found in The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.

Edgar Kunz is the author of Fixer (Ecco, 2023), a New York Times _Editors' Choice pick, and _Tap Out (Ecco, 2019). His poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, _and _American Poetry Review. He splits time between Baltimore and Richmond, where he teaches in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Weijia Pan is the author of Motherlands (Milkweed Editions, 2024), selected by Louise Glück for the 2023 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and winner of the 2025 Levis Reading Prize. A poet and translator from Shanghai, China, his poems have appeared in AGNI, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Georgia Review, Poetry Daily, Poem-a-Day, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Houston, where he was a winner of the Pasul Verlaine Prize in Poetry. He is currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University

Megan Pinto is the author of Saints of Little Faith (Four Way Books 2024 (US), the87press 2025 (UK & Ireland)) and the chaplet Lovesick (Belladonna* Collaborative). Megan’s poems can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Poets.org, Ploughshares, the Slowdown Podcast and elsewhere. She has won the Anne Halley Prize from the Massachusetts Review and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers, as well as scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Storyknife. She lives in Brooklyn.

Robert Wood Lynn is a poet from Virginia. His debut collection Mothman Apologia was winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize and Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and was listed as a Best Poetry Book of 2022 by the New York Times. His poems have been featured in American Poetry Review, the Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry Magazine and elsewhere. He teaches poetry at Juilliard and Bennington College and co-hosts the DGN Reading Series in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

Nathan Xavier Osorio’s debut collection of poetry, Querida (University of Pittsburgh Press), won the 2024 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize selected by Shara McCallum, was a finalist for the California Book Award in Poetry, and was selected by Phillip B. Williams as a finalist for Poetry Society of America’s Norma Faber First Book Award. He was selected as a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Irvine and his work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, BOMB, Gulf Coast, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. He served as the 2025 Dartmouth Poet-in-Residence at The Frost Place and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing.

Gabrielle Bates is the author of Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023), named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR and Electric Lit and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Currently Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, she is otherwise based in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium, co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon, and serves as visiting faculty for the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA Program and the McCormack Writing Center (formerly Tin House Writers' Workshops). Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Believer, Ploughshares, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Sewanee Review, and elsewhere. www.gabriellebat.es | IG: @gabrielle_bates_

L. A. Johnson is the author of Lost Music, forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2027, and an Associate Editor of Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems of Larry Levis (Graywolf Press, 2026). She holds a PhD from University of Southern California, where through academic years 2023-25 she was a Mellon Humanities and University of the Future Postdoctoral Fellow. The winner of the 2022 Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, the 2022 Greensboro Review Poetry Prize, and the 2021 Arts & Letters Rumi Poetry Prize, her poems appear in The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She curates the poetry reading series First Rodeo and is currently a Hughes Fellow in Poetry at SMU.

James Ciano is the author of The Committee of Men, forthcoming from Boa Editions in April 2026, and an Associate Editor of Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems of Larry Levis (Graywolf, 2026). He holds a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California, and his recent poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Bennington Review, The Hopkins Review, The Missouri Review, and The Yale Review. His reviews and writings on poetry have appeared in The Adroit Journal, Poetry Northwest, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the 2025-2027 Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University, and lives in Decatur, Georgia.