1st edition, 75 copies: November, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-9868890-9-7
Price: $15 CDN/US including shipping
33 pages
Standard paper, cardstock cover
Status: In Print

REVERB proceeds through a series of dissolves not unlike an experimental film which takes spectators from Montreal's sepia-toned autumn neighbourhoods to the DayGlo colours of Golden Gate Park. While the reader follows Levinson on an avid (and sometimes somber) quest for experience, glints of humour keep surfacing to give REVERB a light-footed poise, complemented by moving portraits of parents and a life-changing courtship.

— Peter Richardson, author of Bit Parts for Fools

Evocative writing... a beautifully conceived and constructed collection.

— Sue MacLeod, author of Mood Swing with Pear

HER JOY

My mother did not live long enough to grow

old. To become frail or delicate. She died in hospital

three months after they took her away. I thought

she would return.

I would see her resting in bed lunch times

when I got home from high school.

We didn't talk about it. I think

she wanted to spare me the pain.

I didn't know I loved my mother.

Her joy was like the hum of a motor. Her "Devoir,"

that lovely evocative French word — homework,

how perfect! For a woman whose life centred 

on the home. And duty, but also something

of the Hebrew "mitzvah", commandment, holiness.

My mother did her homework!

I see her. Seated comfortably, on a blanket,

on a lo ridge above a lake. Her friend Esther

beside her. A Scrabble board between them. 

We romped and splashed, squawked our

summer holiday whale talk. She, there, a talisman

infusing shape and structure into our unfettered play.

My brother and I, and all the other children

insensate witnesses to the silent ticking.

Zav Levinson studied English literature at McGill University and Université de Montréal (M.A., Études Anglaises.) A trained cabinetmaker, he ran the studio workshop for the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia for 33 years. He is poetry co-editor at JONAHmagazine and co-fonder of the 2-Susan's Poetry Circle. His chapbook, Trelliswork, was published by Sky of Ink Press in 2017. His poems have appeared most recently in Montreal Writes, Canadian Jewish News and Dreamers Magazine as well as in the QWF fundraising chapbook My Island, My City and in the 2 Susans Poetry Circle 6th anniversary chapbook What Lasts.