Early books by major writers sometimes feel a little stingy next to the books they become known by, as though they were holding back, when of course the more likely explanation is that they hadn’t yet found the conditions or the method to do their best work. Levis’s early poems are mostly short, wry, imagistic — full of darkness and shadow (“Once I saw my/shadow in water, and/glanced back, but I was gone”) and a melancholy Hemingway rain (“I am a used-car dealer … I am an old Cuban in the rain”). There’s a coolness that reminds me of Denis Johnson (“I steal a car and drive softly away”) or the mildly ironic sensibility of Charles Simic, an eye that sees the world a bit smaller than real size (“Ruled by the longings of toys/left under houses for years. Left as offerings. Dust”).