DEVOTION

Way stations along the road to motherhood, writing, and beyond, by Levine, a poet. The memories that the author shares are of people, places, and events that shaped her concept of devotion. As the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Levine grew up in blue- collar Passaic, New Jersey, surrounded by a close-knit family. From an uncle, Sam—blinded by hereditary syphilis but nonetheless a fan of racetrack betting—she learned that ``though the wounded stay wounded,'' the recognition of one's self ``was a kind of grace, which lived alongside pain''—and that ``the forbidden, the juiciness of Sam's racetrack money'' was also good. From a grandmother, Molly, whose ``passion was to get things right, to clarify and complicate and create,'' Levine ``found out how to work, how to be.'' Family legacies are supplemented here by memories of encounters with a gifted professor who encouraged Levine but was cruel to his own wife; of an affair with a salesman, Mike, that revealed to the author the power of sex—``ruined and potent'' with ``his awful satyr's face, he'd been impossible to resist''; of a near-fatal abortion that, at the time, she thought taught her courage—though now she concludes that ``just having a baby was an act of courage [rendering you]...helpless before the life that would with its own power break out of you and leave you who knew how''; and of a meeting with novelist Jean Rhys, with whom Levine shared a preference for extremes rather than the ``soul- destroying middle.'' Meanwhile, the turbulent adolescence of the author's son and the addiction problems of her husband—both filtered through visits to friends in Italy or vacations in Maine- -remind Levine that ``family life could also be a kind of alchemy- -there always seemed to be something new.'' A minor memoir, despite well-crafted prose.