Levin’s first book, Temples and Fields, won the prestigious Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America in 1988. Since then, she has gained significant acclaim and is known for exploring philosophical and spiritual concerns in poetry. Her work often features everyday imagery and incidents in her poems to reflect on wider meanings. She is, however, not classified as a confessional poet, instead aiming for the universal rather than personal self-revelation. Levin is equally at home with writing in traditional forms or free verse. Her early influences included William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Emily Dickinson.

Levin’s attention to free verse and innovative rhythms recalls E. E. Cummings, while her reflections on objects of nature align her with poets like William Carlos Williams. Her personal note on the National Endowment for the Arts website states that she hopes, “to make something sacred and to do something public […] reaffirming my hope that what I am doing as a poet has meaning and value that radiates, that composing a poem is one of the myriad ways of being a citizen, of making a bridge from innermost to outermost reaches” (“

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