The simultaneous publication of [Ashes and 7 Years From Somewhere] … persuades us again that if poetry comes as naturally as leaves to a tree—as Keats said it must—it will be singular and exciting and new, however wintry its theme. Levine's high theme is the tragic detachment of self from the world, sometimes an embittered withdrawal, sometimes a brutal cutting off by outside forces, a course redeemed in rare moments by desperate joinings and communings. His subject, as in all his books since They Feed They Lion in 1972, is his own history … as it overlays and collides with modern Spanish history. From these materials he has drawn an occasionally stern and moving elegiac poetry.

Levine's best poems are those in which he finely calibrates the brooding presence of past configurations—friends and family, places, historical events—as they compel his imagination here and now. History is no plodding...