Author Description

Product Description As a physician, Dr. Lawrence Levin counseled patients coping with chronic pain. After undergoing back surgery, however, he himself began to suffer dramatically. Previously, he d pursued his vocation, embraced family life, and reveled in sports. Now, he found himself confined to an ordinary room. In response, Dr. Levin turned to exploring the inner chaos pain brings, and embarked on a spiritual quest in prose and poetry to describe his life and visions. Review Poems and Essays from an Ordinary Room is an extraordinary collection of poetry and prose that takes the reader on Lawrence Levin s personal journey from the exhilaration of a life fully lived to the despair of loss, the loss of a young son, and later, the loss of physical function. Suffering severe chronic pain, Levin, with great effort, not unlike Sisyphus, struggles daily. Ultimately, he finds the life of the mind to be unbounded. Consciousness expands. He experiences one minute of Grace. If the physical pain does not abate, sometimes the suffering does. In an effort to define the courage required for this daily kind of work, Levin remembers a brief encounter with a fox he had one moonless night: Her eyes unwavering as if to say, I have cunning. I own the night. And, above all, I have courage. This collection offers the reader a hard-won meditation on transcendence likened by the author to the Aurora borealis, a shimmering apparition. --Adele Ne Jame, author of The South Wind About the Author Always an active sportsman and physician, Lawrence Levin became disabled in March of 2009. This book is a collection of prose and poetry that represents his personal journey through anger,resentment, fear and sadness to acceptance and an embrace of the richness of his life.