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New Selected Poems of Philip Levine
LIGHTS I HAVE SEEN BEFORE The children are off somewhereand when I wakenI hear onlythe buzz of currentin the TVand the refrigerator groaning against the comingday. I rise and wash; there is nothingto think of exceptthe insistent pushof water, and the pipe's
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1991
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304 people want to read
About the author
Philip Levine
137 books154 followersPhilip Levine (b. January 10, 1928, Detroit, Michigan. d. February 14, 2015, Fresno, California) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit.
He taught for over thirty years at the English Department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well. He is appointed to serve as the Poet Laureate of the United States for 2011–2012.
Philip Levine grew up in industrial Detroit, the second of three sons and the first of identical twins of Jewish immigrant parents. His father, Harry Levine owned a used auto parts business, his mother Esther Priscol (Prisckulnick) Levine was a bookseller. When Levine was five years old, his father died. Growing up, he faced the anti-Semitism embodied by the pro-Hitler radio priest Father Coughlin.
Levine started to work in car manufacturing plants at the age of 14. He graduated from Detroit Central High School in 1946 and went to college at Wayne University (now Wayne State University) in Detroit, where he began to write poetry, encouraged by his mother, to whom he later dedicated the book of poems The Mercy. Levine got his A.B. in 1950 and went to work for Chevrolet and Cadillac in what he calls "stupid jobs". He married his first wife Patty Kanterman in 1951. The marriage lasted until 1953. In 1953 he went to the University of Iowa without registering, studying among others with poets Robert Lowell and John Berryman, the latter of which Levine called his "one great mentor". In 1954 he graduated with a mail-order masters degree with a thesis on John Keats' "Ode to Indolence", and married actress Frances J. Artley. He returned to the University of Iowa teaching technical writing, completing his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1957. The same year, he was awarded the Jones Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University. In 1958 he joined the English Department at California State University in Fresno, where he taught until his retirement in 1992. He has also taught at many other universities, among them New York University as Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, at Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Tufts, and the University of California at Berkeley.
He taught for over thirty years at the English Department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well. He is appointed to serve as the Poet Laureate of the United States for 2011–2012.
Philip Levine grew up in industrial Detroit, the second of three sons and the first of identical twins of Jewish immigrant parents. His father, Harry Levine owned a used auto parts business, his mother Esther Priscol (Prisckulnick) Levine was a bookseller. When Levine was five years old, his father died. Growing up, he faced the anti-Semitism embodied by the pro-Hitler radio priest Father Coughlin.
Levine started to work in car manufacturing plants at the age of 14. He graduated from Detroit Central High School in 1946 and went to college at Wayne University (now Wayne State University) in Detroit, where he began to write poetry, encouraged by his mother, to whom he later dedicated the book of poems The Mercy. Levine got his A.B. in 1950 and went to work for Chevrolet and Cadillac in what he calls "stupid jobs". He married his first wife Patty Kanterman in 1951. The marriage lasted until 1953. In 1953 he went to the University of Iowa without registering, studying among others with poets Robert Lowell and John Berryman, the latter of which Levine called his "one great mentor". In 1954 he graduated with a mail-order masters degree with a thesis on John Keats' "Ode to Indolence", and married actress Frances J. Artley. He returned to the University of Iowa teaching technical writing, completing his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1957. The same year, he was awarded the Jones Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University. In 1958 he joined the English Department at California State University in Fresno, where he taught until his retirement in 1992. He has also taught at many other universities, among them New York University as Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, at Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Tufts, and the University of California at Berkeley.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
October 19, 2011
In ‘New and Selected Poems’, readers will find a real master craftsman at work. His language is conservative and seems simple at first, but when the poem blossoms we are all the more surprised and excited because of it. This book is a gem to read and contains a story, making it as hard to put down as your favorite novel. Philip Levine works on so many levels and can be enjoyed by anyone. He is one of America’s great narrative poets. His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling ‘The Simple Truth’—about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives. As he does so, however -- in language of the utmost simplicity and clarity -- these poems often take on an incantatory, almost prayerlike, intensity. It is as though the effort is to overcome the inadequacies of language through its sheer rhythmic and musical power -- a kind of primal power to enthrall, to entrance. Levine’s poetry will be remembered for his giving voice to the complicated lives of men and women and for making something closer to simple song than ordinary speech.
May 23, 2018
I've been reading this collection for a long time, savoring each poem and letting them work around in my brain. Probably my favorites are the ones based in Detroit since I've lived near it for over 40 years. I've never read the grit of the life of the working poor described with such perfect imagery. My least favorites are the Barcelona based ones but I had the sense that this was my lack, not Levine's. The collection ends with "A Walk with Tom Jefferson". Jefferson is a black man living in the aftermath of the Detroit riots. The poem is a pure masterpiece.
January 10, 2018
There are a few gems in here, but overall I found the style too verbose and the imagery recycled. For me, someone like Charles Wright channels the poetic from the pastoral much more effectively. These works are interesting for their insight into twentieth century Detroit, but seemed quite ordinary to me, and not memorable.
November 20, 2023
like being kicked in the head by a horse from a field you only saw once when you were four years old on a cold night being carried in your father's arms
September 5, 2015
Tempting to rate this higher, but it struck me, upon closer examination, that the poems in this work plateau in the selections from "Ashes" (1979) and "1933" (earlier), and that much of the later work, by comparison, is rather average.
Levine's work is characterized by a sort of relentless tetrameter that one might wish he varied; the patient accumulation of details that are, at times, surreal and at times seem to have drawn directly from lived experience; his focus on topics such as the nature of work; and his interest in anarchism (in the sense of wishing to avoid undue interference with the way one lives; not in the sense of attempting to undertake violent acts to undermine society via direct action, although some of the anarchists he writes of were more likely to engage in that sort of activity...it is not activity the writing praises or engages with).
The best poems are probably in "Ashes". Two of them deal distinctly with father/son relationships and attempt to put new slants on them by introducing a mix of the surreal and the mundane to take the father/son relationship outside of its usual context. In "My Son and I", this is done by placing the father and son:
In a coffee house at 3 am/and he believes/I'm dying...
The son also evokes some of the gravitas that Levine gives his working class protagonists in his other poems with his working-class signifiers:
"...He's dressed/in worn corduroy pants/and shirts over shirts; and his hands are stained/as mine once were/with glue, ink, paint..."
I do not think, in this line, the underlying sense that the son is perhaps mentally distressed is lost, and perhaps that he was before learning of his father's impending death (wearing "shirts upon shirts").
In "Starlight", from "Ashes", the too-wise-too-soon narrator remembers his father asking him at 4 years old:
"We/are alone, and he asks me if I am happy./"Are you happy?" I cannot answer./I do not really understand the word,/and the voice, my father's voice, is not/his voice, but somehow thick and choked,/a voice I have not heard before, but heard/often since..."
So many remarkable things about these lines. First, the fact that the young narrator realizes that his father is asking him a more overall question about existence, and more posing the question about existence to himself, but using his son as his shadow, the mirror into which he looks. Second, the thought that the mourning voice of the father is not his normal voice, that somehow parents hide things from adults...
On the opposite side of this spectrum is some of the later poetry, particularly the over-long "A Walk With Tom Jefferson". Levine's poetry, which depends on the slow and patient accumulation of details to tell a story that's larger than the details, does not hold up as well in these longer poems; the reader feels like he or she is gathering a series of vignettes or being taken down a road of many stories the accrual of which is somewhat unclear in its purpose.
Levine's work is characterized by a sort of relentless tetrameter that one might wish he varied; the patient accumulation of details that are, at times, surreal and at times seem to have drawn directly from lived experience; his focus on topics such as the nature of work; and his interest in anarchism (in the sense of wishing to avoid undue interference with the way one lives; not in the sense of attempting to undertake violent acts to undermine society via direct action, although some of the anarchists he writes of were more likely to engage in that sort of activity...it is not activity the writing praises or engages with).
The best poems are probably in "Ashes". Two of them deal distinctly with father/son relationships and attempt to put new slants on them by introducing a mix of the surreal and the mundane to take the father/son relationship outside of its usual context. In "My Son and I", this is done by placing the father and son:
In a coffee house at 3 am/and he believes/I'm dying...
The son also evokes some of the gravitas that Levine gives his working class protagonists in his other poems with his working-class signifiers:
"...He's dressed/in worn corduroy pants/and shirts over shirts; and his hands are stained/as mine once were/with glue, ink, paint..."
I do not think, in this line, the underlying sense that the son is perhaps mentally distressed is lost, and perhaps that he was before learning of his father's impending death (wearing "shirts upon shirts").
In "Starlight", from "Ashes", the too-wise-too-soon narrator remembers his father asking him at 4 years old:
"We/are alone, and he asks me if I am happy./"Are you happy?" I cannot answer./I do not really understand the word,/and the voice, my father's voice, is not/his voice, but somehow thick and choked,/a voice I have not heard before, but heard/often since..."
So many remarkable things about these lines. First, the fact that the young narrator realizes that his father is asking him a more overall question about existence, and more posing the question about existence to himself, but using his son as his shadow, the mirror into which he looks. Second, the thought that the mourning voice of the father is not his normal voice, that somehow parents hide things from adults...
On the opposite side of this spectrum is some of the later poetry, particularly the over-long "A Walk With Tom Jefferson". Levine's poetry, which depends on the slow and patient accumulation of details to tell a story that's larger than the details, does not hold up as well in these longer poems; the reader feels like he or she is gathering a series of vignettes or being taken down a road of many stories the accrual of which is somewhat unclear in its purpose.
March 18, 2024
"What commandment
was broken to bring God's
wrath down on these streets,
what did we wrong, going
about our daily lives,
to work at all hours until
the work dried up,
then sitting at home until home
became a curse
with the yellow light
of afternoon falling
with the weight of final
judgement, I can't say."
This collection covers 25 years worth of poetry from the author, and it is not even a COMPLETE collection. The great majority of the work is typical of Levine's style: direct, sparse pieces mostly about his own life and experiences, especially as they have to deal with his blue collar jobs. Covering such a vast expanse, not everything is going to be amazing, like when he experiments with metaphor/imagery. He really shines when he describes daily struggles and grinds. This is what he knew for a large portion of his life: how you worked these jobs until they finally broke you. Yes, he speaks of the grit and grime, but there is a reverence to these scenes, and the people they contain. Levine's honest and sincere style is what makes his work so moving.
3.5 Stars
was broken to bring God's
wrath down on these streets,
what did we wrong, going
about our daily lives,
to work at all hours until
the work dried up,
then sitting at home until home
became a curse
with the yellow light
of afternoon falling
with the weight of final
judgement, I can't say."
This collection covers 25 years worth of poetry from the author, and it is not even a COMPLETE collection. The great majority of the work is typical of Levine's style: direct, sparse pieces mostly about his own life and experiences, especially as they have to deal with his blue collar jobs. Covering such a vast expanse, not everything is going to be amazing, like when he experiments with metaphor/imagery. He really shines when he describes daily struggles and grinds. This is what he knew for a large portion of his life: how you worked these jobs until they finally broke you. Yes, he speaks of the grit and grime, but there is a reverence to these scenes, and the people they contain. Levine's honest and sincere style is what makes his work so moving.
3.5 Stars
December 29, 2017
The roof leaks
from yesterday's rain
the waters gather above us
waiting for one mistake.
When a drop falls on Lemon's
corded arm, he looks at it
as thought it were something
rare or mysterious
like a drop of water or
a single lucid meteor
fallen slowly from
nowhere and burning on
his skin like a tear.
from yesterday's rain
the waters gather above us
waiting for one mistake.
When a drop falls on Lemon's
corded arm, he looks at it
as thought it were something
rare or mysterious
like a drop of water or
a single lucid meteor
fallen slowly from
nowhere and burning on
his skin like a tear.
November 25, 2018
a book that realistically deals with very complex issues that are difficult to understand but when they are understood they are very understandable
February 5, 2023
"The words become, / like prayer, a kind of nonsense / which becomes the thought of our lives."
June 30, 2024
A stunning collection of work from a writer who should be read by everyone.
March 11, 2008
The almost twenty years of poetry spanned in Philip Levine’s “New Selected Poems” is a rare study of how a mostly singular theme can be explored with unique rigor and care at each stage. All of Levine’s collections represented here contain ruminations on the struggle between physical labor and intellectual stimulus and how this dichotomy parallels the human struggle between faith and faithlessness. Levine’s poems traverse the country, from the industrial wastelands of the Detroit car companies to the lush valleys of central California, juxtaposing the inane details of daily life, “the buzz of current/in the TV/and the refrigerator” (3), with images of spiritual enlightenment, such as a river stone “riding the jagged blade of heaven/down to earth” (69). Yet, the real power of Levine’s work (a noun that is most appropriately applicable to this poet) is in its consistency, the daily-ness of its tone, in that these qualities are interesting examples of form highlighting content. Levine has never strayed from the laborers that reared him and the wisdom these women and men hold in their callused hands. Accordingly, he uses their language, their phrasing and culls images from their worlds in his poems. This relationship also reveals a surprising correlation between the poet and the day laborer: the work can be exhausting and repetitive, but its rewards in the moments of clarity that come from consistent effort are luminous.
December 14, 2015
What a fantastic poet--he was born in Detroit and lots of his poems are about working in the car industry in Detroit. His poems are very easy to read--not much rhyming, great meter and wonderful imagery. He was US poet laureate for a year, and deserved it. Lots of first person poems, where the first person moves from entity to entity.
The last poem in the book, is "A Walk with Tom Jefferson" Tom Jefferson is a black guy, who has moved up from Alabama to take part in the car manufacture business. The poet goes for a walk with him. "What do you make, about 2.25" His son, another Tom Jefferson, leaves, and Levine brings in the image of Absalom, Biblical David's son, who was killed in rebellion with his father. Too good.
The last poem in the book, is "A Walk with Tom Jefferson" Tom Jefferson is a black guy, who has moved up from Alabama to take part in the car manufacture business. The poet goes for a walk with him. "What do you make, about 2.25" His son, another Tom Jefferson, leaves, and Levine brings in the image of Absalom, Biblical David's son, who was killed in rebellion with his father. Too good.
May 12, 2015
A splendid sample of work from the Detroit-born former poet laureate. My favorite of his work--naturally--are the lyrics that blossom from his home geography, opening up the ostensibly prosaic aspects of working-class Detroit life into something beautiful, ephemeral, introspective, true. Levine can be more fanciful at other times, playfully teasing surreal conceits into whimsical revelations. If there's anything unsatisfying about the book it's merely the nature of collections like this that bridge artistic periods into a jarring "greatest hits" set of juxtapositions.
March 7, 2016
An absolutely stunning collection of contemporary poetry. Levine has no good news to bring; he is an apocalyptic poet, in the same way that T. S. Eliot was -- blasted and degraded Detroit is Levine's Waste Land, and in many ways he surpasses Eliot in making bleakness and ugliness beautiful. And he is a confessional poet of the first order, mining his life and his family for material that somehow transcends the banal into sublimity. And to top it off, underneath it all, there is a sort of photo-negative of Whitmanian ecstasy. A remarkable poet.
August 10, 2007
Great accessible poetry from my favorite living poet. Even if you don't like (or get) poetry, you should like this book. Levine employs very simple prose diction but does it very very well to produce what I consider some of the most humane, honest, sincere poetry of the post-WWII years. Read these poems.
January 22, 2008
If you like William Carlos Williams, you'll probably like this writer. He takes risks in the words he uses, and stays unafraid as he works thru so much emotion (good & bad), and failure. I suppose I needed to read this book at the dawn of a new year. This is one of many books on my son's shelves. Amazing.
May 3, 2012
This is Levine's Selected Poems with about an additional 60 pages of content amounting to 15 or so poems. The additions are great and Levine's narrative voice and resounding themes are still present. If you are a fan of Levine, this book is a must to at least read once. I will be reading it time and again.
November 15, 2007
If you get only two books of poetry in your life, make this the second (Plath's Collected is first). Levine is the quintessential 20th Century working class poet. He's got a beautiful voice and sort of calls himself an anarchist. You'll even find some Spanish Civil War poems in here.
February 7, 2009
"How Much Can It Hurt?", "You Can Have It" and "Lost and Found"
January 20, 2016
Liked most of his poems that were easy to understand about concrete situations in our life. Very descriptive.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews