Philip Levine (January 10, 1928 – February 14, 2015) was an American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for more than thirty years in the English department ofCalifornia State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well. He served on the Board of Chancellors of theAcademy of American Poets from 2000 to 2006,[1] and was appointedPoet Laureate of the United States for 2011–2012.[2][3]
Philip Levine grew up in industrialDetroit, the second of three sons and the first ofidentical twins ofJewish immigrant parents. His father, Harry Levine, owned a used auto parts business,[4] his mother, Esther Priscol (Pryszkulnik) Levine, was a bookseller.[5] When Levine was five years old, his father died.[6] While growing up, he faced theanti-Semitism embodied byFather Coughlin, the pro-Nazi radio priest.[7] In high school, a teacher told him, "You write like an angel. Why don't you think about becoming a writer?"[8] At this point, he was already working at night in auto factories, though he was just 14 years old.Detroit Central High School graduated him in 1946, and he went to college at Wayne University (nowWayne State University) in Detroit, where he began to write poetry, encouraged by his mother, to whom he dedicated the book of poemsThe Mercy.[9] Levine earned hisA.B. in 1950 and went to work forChevrolet andCadillac in what he called "stupid jobs."[2] The work, he later wrote, was “so heavy and monotonous that after an hour or two I was sure each night that I would never last the shift.”[8]
He married his first wife, Patty Kanterman, in 1951. The marriage lasted until 1953.[5]
The familial, social, and economic world of twentieth-century Detroit is one of the major subjects of Levine's work.[16] His portraits of working-class Americans and his continuous examination of his Jewish immigrant inheritance (both based on real life and described through fictional characters) has left a testimony of mid-twentieth century American life.[16]
Levine's working experience lent his poetry a profound skepticism with regard to conventional American ideals. In his first two books,On the Edge (1963) andNot This Pig (1968), the poetry dwells on those who suddenly become aware that they are trapped in some murderous processes not of their own making.[17] In 1968, Levine signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse to make tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[18]
In his first two books, Levine was somewhat traditional in form and relatively constrained in expression.[16] Beginning withThey Feed They Lion, typically Levine's poems are free-verse monologues tending towardtrimeter ortetrameter.[19] The music of Levine's poetry depends on the tension between his line-breaks and his syntax. The title poem of Levine's book1933 (1974) is an example of the cascade of clauses and phrases one finds in his poetry.[16] Other collections includeThe Names of the Lost,A Walk with Tom Jefferson,New Selected Poems, and the National Book Award-winningWhat Work Is.[16]
Near the end of his life, Levine, an avid jazz aficionado, collaborated with jazz saxophonist and composer Benjamin Boone[2] on the melding of his poetry and narration with music. The resulting CD, “The Poetry of Jazz” (Origin Records 82754), was released posthumously on March 16, 2018. It contains fourteen of Levine's poems and performances by Levine and Boone as well as jazz greats Chris Potter, Greg Osby, and Tom Harrell.[20][21]
On the Edge & Over: Poems, Old, Lost & New (1976), Cloud Marauder Press, ASIN: B0006D0JTI. Contains 16 of the 21 poems from Levine's 1963 debut volume,On the Edge, plus a second section made up of seven “lost” poems, and a third consisting of five new poems.
Moyers & Company, on December 29, 2013, Philip Levine reads some of his poetry and explores how his years working on Detroit's assembly lines inspired his poetry.
^abcDana Gioia; Chryss Yost; Jack Hicks, eds. (2004)."Philip Levine".California poetry: from the Gold Rush to the present. A California legacy book. Heyday. pp. 159–160.ISBN978-1-890771-72-0.
^Kan, Elianna."My Lost Poet",The Paris Review, February 23, 2015. Accessed January 17, 2019. "In the spring of 2012, Philip Levine delivered a lecture at the Library of Congress called “My Lost Poets,” marking the end of his tenure as the eighteenth U.S. poet laureate.... I arrived at his home on Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights just as he and his wife, Franny, were finishing lunch."
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