One poet's existentialism
May 26, 2006

Poetic works by Kurt Levi, a Holocaust survivor, will be presented in Spanish by Tere Azanza on Tuesday, May 30, at 9pm at Cafe La Taberna of the Arte Forma y Color Gallery, Plaza Principal number 18, Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato.

Levi was born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1926. When the Nazis came to power, he and his family fled Germany and began a true odyssey-through the Mediterranean Sea, Suez Channel, Indochina and China-and eventually reached the United States. Levi was then 18 and dispatched to the Pacific theater, where he fought and was injured in Okinawa. While a beatnik and hippie in San Francisco, Kurt suffered tuberculosis. The antibiotic therapy left him deaf. Levi left the US 20 years ago to settle first in San Miguel de Allende and then in Aguascalientes.

Levi says that his mother's inspiration determined his character and development throughout his hazardous life-imprinting profound traits he turns over in his poems, which he writes in English. All that is human is manifested in Levi's work: love, disappointment with materialist life, racial discrimination, superficiality, egoism. Levi asserts that only daily affection can quench the heart's thirst, permitting an individual to reach freedom.

Poetry reading in Spanish by Tere Azanza, Works by Kurt Levi
Tuesday, May 30, 9pm
Café La Taberna, 
Plaza Principal 18
Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato