Poetry | $15 ($12 direct from UDP)
Paperback original. 96 pp, 6 x 8 in.
ISBN 978-1-933254-49-4
Publication Date: August 1, 2009
Distribution: SPD

Neighbor’s mutable, shifty narrator alternately reifies and attempts to refuse the constricting, separating, culture-load bearing wall between lovers and neighbors. 

"In her second full-length collection, Levitsky (Under the Sun) challenges readers with an expansive sequence of poems that vigorously dissemble and reassemble notions of what a poem is and does [ ... ] A decisively innovative book; Neighbor is brimming with sharply reported discoveries." —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, June 2009

"Nearly touching are the ethical realm of our obligation to others and the aesthetic world of our freedom from such obligations. Levitsky's Neighbor confronts this imaginary dividing line—in the process, creating a poetry that both provokes community and critiques our social habituations. This is my neighborhood." —CHARLES BERNSTEIN

"Neighbor is a sweet saga of disconnection. A collectivity of loss. Rachel should be working for the city of New York. 'I've decided to use my obsession/with my neighbor as the context/ for a discussion of the State.' That in itself is incredible." —EILEEN MYLES

"In and outside the window of Rachel Levitsky's apartment lie sadness, amusement and conflicted regard for the weirdo constructs of faith and scum politics. Her poet energy is a sweet intellect with lazy compulsive lines dropping onto a free and wishful page, ok with semi-resolve amidst the minor clatter of daily lust." —THURSTON MOORE

"One of the joys of this book is the spirit of inquiry it displays, the shifting perspectives and positing. So many sides are presented that the work is never in danger of becoming doctrinaire or didactic." MARJORIE TESSER, Coldfront

NEWS AND REVIEWS

09.02.11 | Neighbor by Rachel Levitsky is reviewed in e-consulta

04.08.11 | Dog Ear by Erica Baum and Neighbor by Rachel Levitsky featured in Jacket2

12.10.10 | Galatea Resurrects no. 15 reviews Nets, As It Turned Out, and Neighbor

11.08.10 | Rachel Levitsky’s Neighbor is reviewed in Coldfront

05.10.10 | Neighbor by Rachel Levitsky is a Recent Title of Note on The Constant Critic

03.04.10 | Thom Donovan reviews Rachel Levitsky’s Neighbor on Harriet

02.26.10 | Rachel Levitsky, author of Neighbor, guest blogs on ‘confinement as commons’ for the Poetry Project

12.17.09 | Rachel Levitsky is featured on the blog Delirious Hem, including a reading by Rachel

11.08.09 | The No Tells blog selects Neighbor by Rachel Levitsky as one of the best poetry books of 2009

10.19.09 | Rachel Levitsky speaks about Neighbor in a BOMBLOG interview

07.01.09 | Rachel Levitsky’s Neighbor is included in Page One of Poets & Writers magazine

06.15.09 | Publishers Weekly reviews A Plate of Chicken and Neighbor

06.15.09 | Rachel Levitsky’s Neighbor is reviewed in Publishers Weekly

01.08.09 | Rachel Levitsky’s Neighbor is written up as a Staff Pick on SPD’s site