What do you think?
Rate this book
News of the World
A superb new collection from “a great American poet . . . still at work on his almost-song of himself” (The New York Times Book Review).In both lively prose poems and more formal verse, Philip Levine brings us news from from Detroit, where exhausted workers try to find a decent breakfast after the late shift, and Henry Ford, “supremely bored” in his mansion, clocks in at one of his plants . . . from Spain, where a woman sings a song that rises at dawn, like the dust of ages, through an open window . . . from Andorra, where an old Communist can now supply you with anything you want—a French radio, a Cadillac, or, if you have a week, an American film star.The world of his poetry is one of questionable a typist lives for her only son who will die in a war to come; three boys fish in a river while a fine industrial residue falls on their shoulders. This is a haunted world in which exotic animals travel first class, an immigrant worker in Detroit yearns for the silence of his Siberian exile, and the Western mountains “maintain that huge silence we think of as divine.”A rich, deeply felt collection from one of our master poets.
81 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
About the author
Philip Levine
141 books157 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
December 16, 2025
Another Visit With Philip Levine
I remember the American poet Philip Levine (1928 -- 2015) from reading and reviewing three of his books in 2001: "The Mercy", "The Simple Truth", and "What Work Is". Levine received the 1991 National Book Award for "What Work Is" and the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for "The Simple Truth". From 2011-- 2012, Levine served as Poet Laureate of the United States.
It has been a long time, but I revisited Levine through his 2009 book "News of the World" which was the last collection of poetry published during Levine's life. In its themes and writing, the collection reminded me of the works of Levine I read years earlier. The writing tends to be simple and understated. Levine tends to write in long unrhymed lines. The poems are often spoken by a narrator and involve a reflection on a past experience. In this volume in particular, the poems are sad and elegiac in tone.
Levine is best-known for his poems of working class Detroit in the years surrounding WW II. Many of the poems in this final collection involve Detroit as Levine reflects on years gone by. The poems capture the decay of the city in recent years as Levine also remembers the deadening work on the assembly lines together with his companions and his family. The poems with sad memories of Detroit and portrayals of what Levine saw as its contemporary state include "Arrival and Departure", "Yakov", and "Homecoming". The poem "Library Days" shows an adolescent reading in the Detroit library and dreaming before realizing that he must hit the streets to do his mundane job. The final poem in the collection "Magic" reflects on loss and meeting as Levine remembers an old Detroit friend who loved the saxophonist Lester Young and "the high tenor cry /behind Billie Holiday that took us closer to paradise/than we'd ever been." The poems set in Detroit were those I most enjoyed in this final book. I was reminded of crime novelist Elmore Leonard who lived in Detroit for most of his life and who made the gritty city the setting of many of his best books, including "City Primeval".
As befitting the title "News of the World" many of the poems in this collection are set in a variety of places and times, including Spain, California, New York City, Australia, and elsewhere. With the changes in settings and events, the poems generally feature a speaker with the same melancholy, reflective tone as the Detroit-based poems. An unusual feature of this collection is the group of prose-poems included in the third of the book's four parts which include the title poem, set in Andorra. These prose-poems add variety and a welcome change of pacing to the collection. In a prose-poem called "Islands" Levine offers a Whitmanesque vision of Manhattan and its liveliness. The poem is more full of hope than most of the other works in the volume as Levine reflects:
"One lives inside an immense, endless opera punctuated by the high notes of sirens & the basso profondo of trucks & jackhammers & ferries & tugboats. And when you merge your own small & sincere voice with the singing you come to realize this music is merely the background to a great American epic."
Although this collection lacked some of the freshness I remembered from my earlier reading of Levine, I was grateful for the opportunity to meet him again, as we both have aged. I enjoyed hearing Levine's elegiac voice reflect on industrial-age Detroit and I also enjoyed his understated broad vision of "a great American epic".
Robin Friedman
I remember the American poet Philip Levine (1928 -- 2015) from reading and reviewing three of his books in 2001: "The Mercy", "The Simple Truth", and "What Work Is". Levine received the 1991 National Book Award for "What Work Is" and the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for "The Simple Truth". From 2011-- 2012, Levine served as Poet Laureate of the United States.
It has been a long time, but I revisited Levine through his 2009 book "News of the World" which was the last collection of poetry published during Levine's life. In its themes and writing, the collection reminded me of the works of Levine I read years earlier. The writing tends to be simple and understated. Levine tends to write in long unrhymed lines. The poems are often spoken by a narrator and involve a reflection on a past experience. In this volume in particular, the poems are sad and elegiac in tone.
Levine is best-known for his poems of working class Detroit in the years surrounding WW II. Many of the poems in this final collection involve Detroit as Levine reflects on years gone by. The poems capture the decay of the city in recent years as Levine also remembers the deadening work on the assembly lines together with his companions and his family. The poems with sad memories of Detroit and portrayals of what Levine saw as its contemporary state include "Arrival and Departure", "Yakov", and "Homecoming". The poem "Library Days" shows an adolescent reading in the Detroit library and dreaming before realizing that he must hit the streets to do his mundane job. The final poem in the collection "Magic" reflects on loss and meeting as Levine remembers an old Detroit friend who loved the saxophonist Lester Young and "the high tenor cry /behind Billie Holiday that took us closer to paradise/than we'd ever been." The poems set in Detroit were those I most enjoyed in this final book. I was reminded of crime novelist Elmore Leonard who lived in Detroit for most of his life and who made the gritty city the setting of many of his best books, including "City Primeval".
As befitting the title "News of the World" many of the poems in this collection are set in a variety of places and times, including Spain, California, New York City, Australia, and elsewhere. With the changes in settings and events, the poems generally feature a speaker with the same melancholy, reflective tone as the Detroit-based poems. An unusual feature of this collection is the group of prose-poems included in the third of the book's four parts which include the title poem, set in Andorra. These prose-poems add variety and a welcome change of pacing to the collection. In a prose-poem called "Islands" Levine offers a Whitmanesque vision of Manhattan and its liveliness. The poem is more full of hope than most of the other works in the volume as Levine reflects:
"One lives inside an immense, endless opera punctuated by the high notes of sirens & the basso profondo of trucks & jackhammers & ferries & tugboats. And when you merge your own small & sincere voice with the singing you come to realize this music is merely the background to a great American epic."
Although this collection lacked some of the freshness I remembered from my earlier reading of Levine, I was grateful for the opportunity to meet him again, as we both have aged. I enjoyed hearing Levine's elegiac voice reflect on industrial-age Detroit and I also enjoyed his understated broad vision of "a great American epic".
Robin Friedman
August 19, 2016
A Story
Everyone loves a story. Let's begin with a house.
We can fill it with careful rooms and fill the rooms
with things—tables, chairs, cupboards, drawers
closed to hide tiny beds where children once slept
or big drawers that yawn open to reveal
precisely folded garments washed half to death,
unsoiled, stale, and waiting to be worn out.
There must be a kitchen, and the kitchen
must have a stove, perhaps a big iron one
with a fat black pipe that vanishes into the ceiling
to reach the sky and exhale its smells and collusions.
This was the center of whatever family life
was here, this and the sink gone yellow
around the drain where the water, dirty or pure,
ran off with no explanation, somehow like the point
of this, the story we promised and may yet deliver.
Make no mistake, a family was here. You see
the path worn into the linoleum where the wood,
gray and certainly pine, shows through.
Father stood there in the middle of his life
to call to the heavens he imagined above the roof
must surely be listening. When no one answered
you can see where his heel came down again
and again, even though he'd been taught
never to demand. Not that life was especially cruel;
they had well water they pumped at first,
a stove that gave heat, a mother who stood
at the sink at all hours and gazed longingly
to where the woods once held the voices
of small bears—themselves a family—and the songs
of birds long fled once the deep woods surrendered
one tree at a time after the workmen arrived
with jugs of hot coffee. The worn spot on the sill
is where Mother rested her head when no one saw,
those two stained ridges were handholds
she relied on; they never let her down.
Where is she now? You think you have a right
to know everything? The children tiny enough
to inhabit cupboards, large enough to have rooms
of their own and to abandon them, the father
with his right hand raised against the sky?
If those questions are too personal, then tell us,
where are the woods? They had to have been
because the continent was clothed in trees.
We all read that in school and knew it to be true.
Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows
of houses as far as sight, and where sight vanishes
into nothing, into the new world no one has seen,
there has to be more than dust, wind-borne particles
of burning earth, the earth we lost, and nothing else.
Everyone loves a story. Let's begin with a house.
We can fill it with careful rooms and fill the rooms
with things—tables, chairs, cupboards, drawers
closed to hide tiny beds where children once slept
or big drawers that yawn open to reveal
precisely folded garments washed half to death,
unsoiled, stale, and waiting to be worn out.
There must be a kitchen, and the kitchen
must have a stove, perhaps a big iron one
with a fat black pipe that vanishes into the ceiling
to reach the sky and exhale its smells and collusions.
This was the center of whatever family life
was here, this and the sink gone yellow
around the drain where the water, dirty or pure,
ran off with no explanation, somehow like the point
of this, the story we promised and may yet deliver.
Make no mistake, a family was here. You see
the path worn into the linoleum where the wood,
gray and certainly pine, shows through.
Father stood there in the middle of his life
to call to the heavens he imagined above the roof
must surely be listening. When no one answered
you can see where his heel came down again
and again, even though he'd been taught
never to demand. Not that life was especially cruel;
they had well water they pumped at first,
a stove that gave heat, a mother who stood
at the sink at all hours and gazed longingly
to where the woods once held the voices
of small bears—themselves a family—and the songs
of birds long fled once the deep woods surrendered
one tree at a time after the workmen arrived
with jugs of hot coffee. The worn spot on the sill
is where Mother rested her head when no one saw,
those two stained ridges were handholds
she relied on; they never let her down.
Where is she now? You think you have a right
to know everything? The children tiny enough
to inhabit cupboards, large enough to have rooms
of their own and to abandon them, the father
with his right hand raised against the sky?
If those questions are too personal, then tell us,
where are the woods? They had to have been
because the continent was clothed in trees.
We all read that in school and knew it to be true.
Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows
of houses as far as sight, and where sight vanishes
into nothing, into the new world no one has seen,
there has to be more than dust, wind-borne particles
of burning earth, the earth we lost, and nothing else.
May 25, 2010
News of the World is a volume of poems about work, about disappearing industrial activity, and the flourishing of rust. Levine writes about closed factories. This is celebration of the past and a world now gone. He stands in the junkyards of America's midwest remembering the vanished times of the metal lunchbox and lines of men filing under skies busy with stacks and smoke and through workshops filled with the clamor of industry and purpose. Mostly he's remembering a childhood growing up in settings such as these. The poems here are evocative, nostalgic, and sometimes sad. One called "Library Days" is a favorite because it reminded me of myself. He describes visiting the library as if entering a house of worship and recalls librarians who cast a suspicious eye on a kid who'd read so voraciously. Even this poem is about work. He considers heavy reading an endeavor, the idea of digging into literature a slow tidal movement toward ambition. I also admired a central section of prose poems. It's a favorite style of mine when it doesn't fly off into the surreal. Levine avoids that and writes with delicacy about Europe, the fifties, the closed diner, the closed factory, the door closed on childhood.
November 18, 2024
This is another book that’s been on my shelf for a few years, the origin of which I have since long forgotten. Though I have been pleasantly surprised picking up books this way, this was unfortunately not one of those times.
The further I got into this collection, the less impressed I was with the pieces. I am not generally a big fan of blocky prose-type poems so that section put me off totally.
The content also became more obscure and difficult to follow. The storytelling aspect I found intriguing in the beginning started to really overpower the pieces by the end. Meh.
The further I got into this collection, the less impressed I was with the pieces. I am not generally a big fan of blocky prose-type poems so that section put me off totally.
The content also became more obscure and difficult to follow. The storytelling aspect I found intriguing in the beginning started to really overpower the pieces by the end. Meh.
January 9, 2020
Loved the first section. Could not get through the prose poems in the second section. Levine captures the essence of factory-town culture better than anyone I have read.
October 29, 2009
THE AGNOSTIC PARABLES OF PHILIP LEVINE
News of the World
by Philip Levine
Hardcover 80 pages
Alfred A. Knopf (October, 2009)
In Philip Levine’s most recent collection, News of the World, the last poem in the book, ”Magic,” begins by describing Detroit’s Michigan Central Terminal, now destined to go the way of New York’s Pennsylvania Station. The poem’s speaker recounts the terminal’s importance as “the scene” of his early “enlightenment,” where he learned about “treasures of the world [he’d:] never dreamed of,” such as “an elixir called ‘Penrod’” (his way of pronouncing the French aperitif, Pernod). At first the speaker appears to us as a laughable working stiff whose recollections of the past border on the fantastical. And what he recounts to his “grandkids” are only those magical parts of his past, when “cats and dogs traveled first class” and “elms and maples/ sprang up full-grown overnight between the tracks.”
So when we finally arrive in the poem at what he doesn’t tell them: the story of Carey, a friend and co-worker, the tone begins to change until in the final lines the fancifulness of the speaker falls away like the sense of life’s magic which he is trying so hard to keep:
" . . . It took me years to learn
a way of walking under an umbrella
of indifferent stars, and to call them “heavenly
bodies,” to regard myself as no part
of a great scheme that included everything.
I had to put one foot in front of another,
hold both arms out for balance, stare ahead,
breathe like a beginner, and hope to arrive."
These lines are spoken in reaction to what has happened to Carey, who after his return from Korea as a young hero, his hair having turned gray, smashes his treasured collection of Lester Young and Billie Holiday 78s, the very music which before the war had transported both the speaker and Carey “closer to paradise than [they’d:] ever been.”
This is the news of the world. Change governs our most immutable expectations of everything and everybody: the monumental permanence of the terminal now about to be torn down, the divine silence of the mountains in the very first poem of the book as they dissolve imperceptibly into dust, the communists of Andorra now turned capitalists in the title poem of the book, and even what we had expected of Carey, who before the war had lived for violence, seeking out brawls every Friday night after work. Suddenly all of that changes and not necessarily in a pretty way or for the better.
Through out Levine’s seventeen books, his poems often appear to be anecdotes based upon his life. Whether what he writes is factually true or a fiction is unimportant, the poems always convey a sincerity and an authenticity which ring true. They are never meant to “confess,” to tell you Levine’s story, per se. Indeed, the “still blond, still Nordic” speaker of “Magic,” who later grows “squat and bull-necked,” is quite obviously not Levine. Instead, these poems stand as agnostic parables about the way we live, and their speakers do not regard themselves as “part of a great scheme.” They are only trying make sense of their and, by extension, our own experiences. They investigate the values we hold, and what it costs to hold them.
The language of these poems is always simple, and designed to focus the reader toward the tale at hand, and it is Levine’s unerring eye and ear which can always find that poignant detail, that vivid image, that right word which will transport the reader to the heart of the matter. The Oxford American Dictionary defines news as “noteworthy information,” and this is what Levine gives the reader. News of the World informs us of values we may be in danger of losing. It seems to echo and remind us of what William Carlos Williams once wrote, "It is difficult/ to get the news from poems,/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there." Or they “hold out both arms for balance . . . and hope to arrive.”
News of the World
by Philip Levine
Hardcover 80 pages
Alfred A. Knopf (October, 2009)
In Philip Levine’s most recent collection, News of the World, the last poem in the book, ”Magic,” begins by describing Detroit’s Michigan Central Terminal, now destined to go the way of New York’s Pennsylvania Station. The poem’s speaker recounts the terminal’s importance as “the scene” of his early “enlightenment,” where he learned about “treasures of the world [he’d:] never dreamed of,” such as “an elixir called ‘Penrod’” (his way of pronouncing the French aperitif, Pernod). At first the speaker appears to us as a laughable working stiff whose recollections of the past border on the fantastical. And what he recounts to his “grandkids” are only those magical parts of his past, when “cats and dogs traveled first class” and “elms and maples/ sprang up full-grown overnight between the tracks.”
So when we finally arrive in the poem at what he doesn’t tell them: the story of Carey, a friend and co-worker, the tone begins to change until in the final lines the fancifulness of the speaker falls away like the sense of life’s magic which he is trying so hard to keep:
" . . . It took me years to learn
a way of walking under an umbrella
of indifferent stars, and to call them “heavenly
bodies,” to regard myself as no part
of a great scheme that included everything.
I had to put one foot in front of another,
hold both arms out for balance, stare ahead,
breathe like a beginner, and hope to arrive."
These lines are spoken in reaction to what has happened to Carey, who after his return from Korea as a young hero, his hair having turned gray, smashes his treasured collection of Lester Young and Billie Holiday 78s, the very music which before the war had transported both the speaker and Carey “closer to paradise than [they’d:] ever been.”
This is the news of the world. Change governs our most immutable expectations of everything and everybody: the monumental permanence of the terminal now about to be torn down, the divine silence of the mountains in the very first poem of the book as they dissolve imperceptibly into dust, the communists of Andorra now turned capitalists in the title poem of the book, and even what we had expected of Carey, who before the war had lived for violence, seeking out brawls every Friday night after work. Suddenly all of that changes and not necessarily in a pretty way or for the better.
Through out Levine’s seventeen books, his poems often appear to be anecdotes based upon his life. Whether what he writes is factually true or a fiction is unimportant, the poems always convey a sincerity and an authenticity which ring true. They are never meant to “confess,” to tell you Levine’s story, per se. Indeed, the “still blond, still Nordic” speaker of “Magic,” who later grows “squat and bull-necked,” is quite obviously not Levine. Instead, these poems stand as agnostic parables about the way we live, and their speakers do not regard themselves as “part of a great scheme.” They are only trying make sense of their and, by extension, our own experiences. They investigate the values we hold, and what it costs to hold them.
The language of these poems is always simple, and designed to focus the reader toward the tale at hand, and it is Levine’s unerring eye and ear which can always find that poignant detail, that vivid image, that right word which will transport the reader to the heart of the matter. The Oxford American Dictionary defines news as “noteworthy information,” and this is what Levine gives the reader. News of the World informs us of values we may be in danger of losing. It seems to echo and remind us of what William Carlos Williams once wrote, "It is difficult/ to get the news from poems,/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there." Or they “hold out both arms for balance . . . and hope to arrive.”
December 16, 2011
Something between a 3 and 4, but fuck it, I love the whole "working man's voice" thing Levine's got going on and I love him and he got himself named the Poet Laureate, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. There's not much to say. This is poetry that someone who got put off poetry from too many high school English classes ("but what is the poet really saying?") can get into. Clean, natural, emotionally gutting. I'll let the poetry speak for itself:
OF LOVE AND OTHER DISASTERS
The punch-press operator from up north
met the assembler from West Virginia
in a bar near the stadium. Friday, late,
but too early to go home alone. Neither
had anything in mind, so they conversed
about the upcoming baseball season
about which neither cared. We could
be a couple, he thought, but she was
all wrong, way too skinny. For years
he’d had an image of the way a woman
should look, and it wasn’t her, it wasn’t
anyone he’d ever known, certainly not
his ex-wife, who’d moved back south
to live with her high-school sweetheart.
About killed him. I don’t need that shit,
he almost said aloud, and then realized
she’d been talking to someone, maybe
to him, about how she couldn’t get
her hands right, how the grease ate
so deeply into her skin it became
a part of her, and she put her hand,
palm up, on the bar and pointed
with her cigarette at the deep lines
the work had carved. “The life line,”
he said, “which one is that?” “None,”
she said, and he noticed that her eyes
were hazel flecked with tiny spots
of gold, and then—embarrassed—looked
back at her hand, which seemed tiny
and delicate, the fingers yellowed
with calluses but slender and fine.
She took a paper napkin off the bar,
spit on it and told him to hold still
while she carefully lifted his glasses,
leaving him half blind, and wiped
something off just above his left
cheekbone. “There,” she said, handing
him back his glasses, “I got it,” and even
with his glasses on, what she showed
him was nothing he could see, maybe
only make-believe. He thought, “Better
get out of here before it’s too late,” but
suspected too late was what he wanted.
OF LOVE AND OTHER DISASTERS
The punch-press operator from up north
met the assembler from West Virginia
in a bar near the stadium. Friday, late,
but too early to go home alone. Neither
had anything in mind, so they conversed
about the upcoming baseball season
about which neither cared. We could
be a couple, he thought, but she was
all wrong, way too skinny. For years
he’d had an image of the way a woman
should look, and it wasn’t her, it wasn’t
anyone he’d ever known, certainly not
his ex-wife, who’d moved back south
to live with her high-school sweetheart.
About killed him. I don’t need that shit,
he almost said aloud, and then realized
she’d been talking to someone, maybe
to him, about how she couldn’t get
her hands right, how the grease ate
so deeply into her skin it became
a part of her, and she put her hand,
palm up, on the bar and pointed
with her cigarette at the deep lines
the work had carved. “The life line,”
he said, “which one is that?” “None,”
she said, and he noticed that her eyes
were hazel flecked with tiny spots
of gold, and then—embarrassed—looked
back at her hand, which seemed tiny
and delicate, the fingers yellowed
with calluses but slender and fine.
She took a paper napkin off the bar,
spit on it and told him to hold still
while she carefully lifted his glasses,
leaving him half blind, and wiped
something off just above his left
cheekbone. “There,” she said, handing
him back his glasses, “I got it,” and even
with his glasses on, what she showed
him was nothing he could see, maybe
only make-believe. He thought, “Better
get out of here before it’s too late,” but
suspected too late was what he wanted.
October 25, 2020
When I was in high school in Fresno one of our teachers brought Philip Levine to give a poetry reading. Our high school thought of poetry as elitist nonsense. Now the English teacher who brought Levine probably felt more strongly about poetry than did the others but even he couldn't articulate value in learning it.
I don't remember the talk and quite frankly it might not have even happened but this mythic event spurred me this year to read some of Philip Levine's work. And while very late to the game, I'm treating poetry with a seriousness I wasn't encouraged to give it when I was receiving an education.
'News of the World' is his last collection published in his life and came out when he was 81. The title poem is ironic as the narrator goes to a tiny town in Andorra and talks to the 'Communists' about buying a Cadillac or a film star. They seem ready to make a solid capitalist deal no matter what the thing is to be had. There is a humble and accessible quality to the poems that do evoke deeper vibrations and possible mysticism. Granted this is the spirituality of the everyday and the everyman but not in any pretentious way and not in any attempt to show off. His word choice is often plain and clear. I know the words are carefully selected to feature experience honestly presented.
My favorite poem is 'Our Valley' which focuses on the eternal wonder and mystery of the place that was once a sea but is now a desert requiring massive amounts of water to bring alive the agriculture for which it is a mighty world leader. He mentions a fig orchard and triggered a memory of them as dusty, ugly collections of rubbery, ungainly trees. This poem brought back how much I miss how they nestled in between the housing developments that rolled right over them.
I don't remember the talk and quite frankly it might not have even happened but this mythic event spurred me this year to read some of Philip Levine's work. And while very late to the game, I'm treating poetry with a seriousness I wasn't encouraged to give it when I was receiving an education.
'News of the World' is his last collection published in his life and came out when he was 81. The title poem is ironic as the narrator goes to a tiny town in Andorra and talks to the 'Communists' about buying a Cadillac or a film star. They seem ready to make a solid capitalist deal no matter what the thing is to be had. There is a humble and accessible quality to the poems that do evoke deeper vibrations and possible mysticism. Granted this is the spirituality of the everyday and the everyman but not in any pretentious way and not in any attempt to show off. His word choice is often plain and clear. I know the words are carefully selected to feature experience honestly presented.
My favorite poem is 'Our Valley' which focuses on the eternal wonder and mystery of the place that was once a sea but is now a desert requiring massive amounts of water to bring alive the agriculture for which it is a mighty world leader. He mentions a fig orchard and triggered a memory of them as dusty, ugly collections of rubbery, ungainly trees. This poem brought back how much I miss how they nestled in between the housing developments that rolled right over them.
October 22, 2025
News of the World is mainly based on the middle class, the woes of industrial living, and the hardship in normalcy. He captures the reality of living in suburbia in almost a dystopian way. His writing is nostalgic, descriptive, and fluid. Each poem explained the tedium of blue-collar life. It reflects on the wars and developments of the past, and hints at the path industrial society is headed down. Basically, Levine is invoking "News" from different points in time, all around the world, that have led us to today. He shows change, and cycles. He shows that each minuscule story is part of the bigger picture. Each inconsequential event matters, because even the smallest things show our values and ways of life; we mustn't let go of the little things, or we're letting go of who we are. Is it freedom or loneliness to have an experience that is solely yours? That is explored in this book. The best way I can describe it is this: every poem feels like a painting by Edward Hopper (the same dreamy, forlorn, warm, feelings). The beauty of capturing everyday life, of simply absorbing experiences into a page, is what Levine does so well. I look forward to reading more from this obviously seasoned poet.
P.S. My favorite poems were "A Story", "Islands", "The Death Of Mayakovsky", and "Library Days"
P.S. My favorite poems were "A Story", "Islands", "The Death Of Mayakovsky", and "Library Days"
October 6, 2021
Favorites:
On Me!
Yakov
Quotes:
“…these were
his companions, his Siberia.
His Detroit was something else:
in the back of Automotive
a bare bulb swung above him
as he bowed to the wrong job
in the wrong place and entered
the unwritten epic of tedium,
a cigarette in one hand,
three fingers on the other.”
On Me!
Yakov
Quotes:
“…these were
his companions, his Siberia.
His Detroit was something else:
in the back of Automotive
a bare bulb swung above him
as he bowed to the wrong job
in the wrong place and entered
the unwritten epic of tedium,
a cigarette in one hand,
three fingers on the other.”
December 30, 2018
Another prime example of why I don’t like poetry
None of these poems made any sense or stirred any emotion in me. They all sounded like a bunch of randomly collected sentences with nothing to hook the reader.
None of these poems made any sense or stirred any emotion in me. They all sounded like a bunch of randomly collected sentences with nothing to hook the reader.
April 24, 2021
Lovely poetry near the end of this prolific poet's life. Levine's poetry presents a working class take on the world, and it soars in this volume, into a view of what comes next that is akin to Buddhism. If you like Levine's poetry, be sure to get this volume.
February 1, 2024
Levine has some excellent poems in this collection. I enjoyed a few. There's my disconnect, recognizing good yet somehow not being on the author's wavelength. Poetry is personal, and you must feel a connection that I did not.
January 27, 2019
This short collection of poetry has the ability to trample the souls of those that do not know the immensity of the working class or the sacrifices that come as a result.
May 27, 2021
Walt Whitman would be so proud.
November 29, 2022
Each poem is a novel in miniature.. Enlightening.
April 29, 2023
Four and a half stars
An amazing late tour de force from a master. The prose poems are slightly weaker, though we must applaud his willingness to experiment with form.
An amazing late tour de force from a master. The prose poems are slightly weaker, though we must applaud his willingness to experiment with form.
September 14, 2023
Ok it was givingggg newsies, but aesthetic poetry???
February 10, 2025
"Fine" poems
August 18, 2025
Not terrible, just not for me - I had a hard time connecting to these poems. There was little imagery, just a rambling, conversational style which lacked emotion.
October 9, 2025
Fixing the Foot: On Rhythm —— fantastic!
May 25, 2026
A variety of characters and scenes appear in these poems but none were particularly gripping or memorable to me.
March 18, 2017
Thank you to my brother Gary for this book.
I was expecting the "news" of its title to be metaphorical and internal, but these poems are informed by history and politics as the author experiences different places and their people. News of the world, indeed.
The lieutenant enjoys this repartee, he's amused by my innocence, he shakes his head, he is discreet & patient with this visitor to his ancient city that boasts the first Plaza de Toros in all the world. "You Americans," & he suppresses his laughter...
I was expecting the "news" of its title to be metaphorical and internal, but these poems are informed by history and politics as the author experiences different places and their people. News of the world, indeed.
The lieutenant enjoys this repartee, he's amused by my innocence, he shakes his head, he is discreet & patient with this visitor to his ancient city that boasts the first Plaza de Toros in all the world. "You Americans," & he suppresses his laughter...
November 14, 2011
“News of the world” by Philip Levine. Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc., New York N.Y. 2009.
“News of the world” by Philip Levine is a collection of prose poetry that brings the happenings of the world to the reader’s fingertips. “News of the world” is a snapshot collection of poems that capture the essence of America and the world. Philip Levine gives contemporary poetry a fresh perspective by taking readers back into a time of war, a place of solitude, and desperation. His poems read like prose poetry, by telling the reader stories of events both glorious and traumatic in order to recapture the essence of those moments in time. For instance, the poem “Not worth the wait”, this poem reads like a story with no line breaks and no rhythm that would be found in poetic verse. It’s fluid, the presentation of the poem is like prose. It communicates meaning rather than draw attention to structure and meter. “Everything in Lisbon is remembered, everything is entered by hand in enormous ledgers that are presented forever.” “My heart sank: I imagined myself like some sad & aged clerk out of Dickens or Melville spending day after day scanning the pages of funeral books in order to catch a name.”(39) Here, Philip Levine uses figurative language to describe the city of Lisbon as a data entry database. This portrays Lisbon as a historic place that is full of culture and history. Lisbon is a place of authenticity, a place that cannot be forgotten. This is an example of Philip Levine’s method of using prose poetry to transport and recreate a moment trapped in time by the imagination. Philip Levine transports the reader to a distant place that they may have never been before by adding sentimental value and a conversational tone.
Furthermore, Philip Levine also incorporates poetry with line breaks in “News of the world”. For example his poem “Burial Rites” Philip Levine uses enjambment to create a desired effect. The stanza in which he describes his mother’s burial incorporates enjambment. “Six years ago I buried my mother’s ashes beside a young lilac that’s now taller than I, and stuck the stub of a rosebush into her dirt where, like everything else not human, it thrives.” The use of enjambment conveys a somber mode. The reader is able to feel the immense strain and anguish that one feels when burying a loved one. There’s no need for a pause, no line breaks are needed. The enjambment portrays how one’s thoughts continue, and linger though it may be hard to comprehend all of one’s feelings at the moment of pain. Its opposite is an end stopped line which causes the reader to pause and catch a breath in order to go on to the next stanza. End stopped stanzas are fluid, while enjambment is choppy and edgy creating an effect of somberness. “News of the world” summarizes Philip Levine’s intentions of illustrating the vast demographics of the world.
“News of the world” by Philip Levine is a collection of prose poetry that brings the happenings of the world to the reader’s fingertips. “News of the world” is a snapshot collection of poems that capture the essence of America and the world. Philip Levine gives contemporary poetry a fresh perspective by taking readers back into a time of war, a place of solitude, and desperation. His poems read like prose poetry, by telling the reader stories of events both glorious and traumatic in order to recapture the essence of those moments in time. For instance, the poem “Not worth the wait”, this poem reads like a story with no line breaks and no rhythm that would be found in poetic verse. It’s fluid, the presentation of the poem is like prose. It communicates meaning rather than draw attention to structure and meter. “Everything in Lisbon is remembered, everything is entered by hand in enormous ledgers that are presented forever.” “My heart sank: I imagined myself like some sad & aged clerk out of Dickens or Melville spending day after day scanning the pages of funeral books in order to catch a name.”(39) Here, Philip Levine uses figurative language to describe the city of Lisbon as a data entry database. This portrays Lisbon as a historic place that is full of culture and history. Lisbon is a place of authenticity, a place that cannot be forgotten. This is an example of Philip Levine’s method of using prose poetry to transport and recreate a moment trapped in time by the imagination. Philip Levine transports the reader to a distant place that they may have never been before by adding sentimental value and a conversational tone.
Furthermore, Philip Levine also incorporates poetry with line breaks in “News of the world”. For example his poem “Burial Rites” Philip Levine uses enjambment to create a desired effect. The stanza in which he describes his mother’s burial incorporates enjambment. “Six years ago I buried my mother’s ashes beside a young lilac that’s now taller than I, and stuck the stub of a rosebush into her dirt where, like everything else not human, it thrives.” The use of enjambment conveys a somber mode. The reader is able to feel the immense strain and anguish that one feels when burying a loved one. There’s no need for a pause, no line breaks are needed. The enjambment portrays how one’s thoughts continue, and linger though it may be hard to comprehend all of one’s feelings at the moment of pain. Its opposite is an end stopped line which causes the reader to pause and catch a breath in order to go on to the next stanza. End stopped stanzas are fluid, while enjambment is choppy and edgy creating an effect of somberness. “News of the world” summarizes Philip Levine’s intentions of illustrating the vast demographics of the world.
January 27, 2019
Rereading this was completely enlightening. I love his style and his ability to make the brothers, the places he's lived so enchanting. So vivid.
Of Philip Levine's book News of the World, what impacted me the most was contained in sections II and III and IIII. I appreciated these parts because they hit a nerve with how most Americans probably feel in their day-to-day working life. How Levine can capture this in poetic form is so pure, so beautiful. With poems like "On Me!", "Homecoming", and "Arrival and Departure", my attention was fixed, and I started to see why Levine should be celebrated.
Let's look at my personal favorite, "Arrival and Departure" for a quick example. Levine describes this town and how it changed over the years, and the people he met there. The passage of time is absolutely stunning and awful. "The Plating plant / on Trumbull had moved to Mexico / or heaven." Levine describes a man in this poem, "You came north / to Detroit in Winter. What were you thinking?" Leaving a poem with a question keeps uncertainty with the reader, but also with the closure you will never get in the poem. Closure that this town will never see. This poem holds many themes or treasures that I will not go into this review, because I don't want to spoil it. But this is a short example on the power of his work.
What surprised me the most about this book were the prose-poems in section III. I wasn't expecting Levine to use the ampersand. I certainly wasn't expecting them to be as beautiful as the regularly formatted poems. This versatility of subject and theme shows the strength of Levine's work and talent. My personal favorite poem in this section is "Island" because he describes New York's 'islands' and his youth spent there.
In both my examples, Levine shows the way in which he can be intimate with the reader. The vulnerability is where the authenticity of his work lies. After reading this, I am going to pick up more poetry by Levine after reading this, and I would recommend reading him if you haven't yet. Especially in the age of political unrest or discontent, Levine provided me with some comfort that this has happened before, and will continue to cycle. He puts a looking glass to the working class, and you will soon see as I saw, that there is rarely an upswing for the working class. That even when things are good, they never reach great. There is a certain amount of happiness in his work, showing the good along with the bad.
Of Philip Levine's book News of the World, what impacted me the most was contained in sections II and III and IIII. I appreciated these parts because they hit a nerve with how most Americans probably feel in their day-to-day working life. How Levine can capture this in poetic form is so pure, so beautiful. With poems like "On Me!", "Homecoming", and "Arrival and Departure", my attention was fixed, and I started to see why Levine should be celebrated.
Let's look at my personal favorite, "Arrival and Departure" for a quick example. Levine describes this town and how it changed over the years, and the people he met there. The passage of time is absolutely stunning and awful. "The Plating plant / on Trumbull had moved to Mexico / or heaven." Levine describes a man in this poem, "You came north / to Detroit in Winter. What were you thinking?" Leaving a poem with a question keeps uncertainty with the reader, but also with the closure you will never get in the poem. Closure that this town will never see. This poem holds many themes or treasures that I will not go into this review, because I don't want to spoil it. But this is a short example on the power of his work.
What surprised me the most about this book were the prose-poems in section III. I wasn't expecting Levine to use the ampersand. I certainly wasn't expecting them to be as beautiful as the regularly formatted poems. This versatility of subject and theme shows the strength of Levine's work and talent. My personal favorite poem in this section is "Island" because he describes New York's 'islands' and his youth spent there.
In both my examples, Levine shows the way in which he can be intimate with the reader. The vulnerability is where the authenticity of his work lies. After reading this, I am going to pick up more poetry by Levine after reading this, and I would recommend reading him if you haven't yet. Especially in the age of political unrest or discontent, Levine provided me with some comfort that this has happened before, and will continue to cycle. He puts a looking glass to the working class, and you will soon see as I saw, that there is rarely an upswing for the working class. That even when things are good, they never reach great. There is a certain amount of happiness in his work, showing the good along with the bad.
August 20, 2013
I came into this book with a pretty heavy bias. I burned through my first two of his books (They Feed They Lion and What Work Is). I find the voice of his poetry enchanting. This collection begins in the aftermath of violence. The first half of the book seems to frequently return to a world just after war from the perspective of a person who was never there. Everything is second hand. We only touch the violence through relationships with family or watch it shape the world beyond us from a library window, but by the third section, there is a terrible shift. Section III is written entirely in prose poems, most dealing with a new geography. The imagery is more colored in, too colored in, so vivid that I suppose it broke free of the traditional lines of the poems before. And when we emerge in the final section of the book, Levine does not leave us on the periphery. These new poems are about a childhood lived in the violence of these places. We can feel it now. The poems forge ahead to their inevitable conclusion in a penultimate poem that allows us to finally be washed clean of it all in a rainstorm and a final poem that seems more a reflection on the collection than an independent poem. I'm kind of rambling, and I think it's because this collection had a strange personal appeal. Throughout my reading, I felt myself thinking a lot about the first time I heard the Miles Davis album Sketches of Spain. These poems were musical, and they told a story just beneath the surface that you really have to listen close to hear.
August 27, 2011
I don't know how the Library of Congress picks the Poet Laureate of the United States. I am fairly sure it involves secret meetings and long conversations. However, they do it, I am grateful that they just picked Philip Levine. I might not have read any poetry by him without having heard the announcement about his appointment.
This book is amazing. I just don't have the words to do Levine justice. His words are all you need. Go to the library, check out this book and read. Don't speed through it - there are less than 90 pages. Read each poem. Think about it, maybe read it out loud. Then go away and come back for another. Levine writes stories in his poetry and like all good stories they need to be chewed and digested. This poetry requires thought.
If you know me, you can pick out a couple of poems that I might love. Yes, I did like "Library Days" and the poems set in Spain. But others, ones that I had to warm up to, still stick in my brain. "Closed", "Homecoming" and "Magic" are also wonderful.
You could sit down and read this book in an afternoon. Or you could say I don't read poetry and never even pick it up. Do yourself a favor. Take the time to savor this book. You won't be sorry.
This book is amazing. I just don't have the words to do Levine justice. His words are all you need. Go to the library, check out this book and read. Don't speed through it - there are less than 90 pages. Read each poem. Think about it, maybe read it out loud. Then go away and come back for another. Levine writes stories in his poetry and like all good stories they need to be chewed and digested. This poetry requires thought.
If you know me, you can pick out a couple of poems that I might love. Yes, I did like "Library Days" and the poems set in Spain. But others, ones that I had to warm up to, still stick in my brain. "Closed", "Homecoming" and "Magic" are also wonderful.
You could sit down and read this book in an afternoon. Or you could say I don't read poetry and never even pick it up. Do yourself a favor. Take the time to savor this book. You won't be sorry.
December 28, 2011
I like to keep a book of poems on my bedside table. I chose this last collection by Philip Levine after reading that he was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2011. I had read a few of his poems in the past and enjoyed him so I decided I'd buy a book. I chose this collection over his others simply because it was the one they had at the bookstore I happened to be in. I would recommend any of his poetry, however. His writing never fails to engage me.
I find it difficult to describe poetry so it's hard to tell you why I like Philip Levine. I find his poems approachable. He uses language familiar to me and describes things I have experienced or, at least, can understand. His writing seems straightforward but it is not simple. He has a way of juxtaposing small, mundane things against big, epic ideas that create a sense of time and emotion. One poem compares children playing in water to the distant blue mountains behind them. The scene is both ephemeral and eternal.
It's good poetry.
I find it difficult to describe poetry so it's hard to tell you why I like Philip Levine. I find his poems approachable. He uses language familiar to me and describes things I have experienced or, at least, can understand. His writing seems straightforward but it is not simple. He has a way of juxtaposing small, mundane things against big, epic ideas that create a sense of time and emotion. One poem compares children playing in water to the distant blue mountains behind them. The scene is both ephemeral and eternal.
It's good poetry.
December 4, 2019
I really enjoyed reading the poetry book “news of the world” by Philip Levine. The way the poems connected to nature and life were very grounding throughout the book. His personification of elements in nature really worked to strengthen his poems and added depth to his work. I liked how he wrote about forests in Detroit because it allowed the reader to connect the poems to real events and places. Multiple poems were about physical labor and work and I feel like many people could really relate to these poems because most people have had to do some form of physical labor in their lives, The imagery throughout the whole book was incredibly strong which made it easy to be able to visualize the images he was portraying and I often felt like I was in the environments that Levine was describing. I thoroughly enjoyed reading more of Levine’s work and I would highly recommend reading it too.
August 30, 2011
This offering from our newest Poet Laureate caught my attention as the "fresh pick of the day" at our library. While I am on a "quest" to discover poetry for the first time in my life, I decided to try and tackle it.
Several poems entertained me:
"Of Love and Other Disasters" made me chuckle, "Library Days" made me reminisce, "Innocence" brought a feeling of pride in our nation's ordinary heroes, and "Our Valley" made me think and want to learn how to appreciate the beautiful earth even more.
Yet, I still struggle to understand and appreciate most of the work of most poets, and Levine's work is no different. I prefer authors to say what they mean and not disguise it so. Perhaps in this poetry quest, I will finally learn patience!
Several poems entertained me:
"Of Love and Other Disasters" made me chuckle, "Library Days" made me reminisce, "Innocence" brought a feeling of pride in our nation's ordinary heroes, and "Our Valley" made me think and want to learn how to appreciate the beautiful earth even more.
Yet, I still struggle to understand and appreciate most of the work of most poets, and Levine's work is no different. I prefer authors to say what they mean and not disguise it so. Perhaps in this poetry quest, I will finally learn patience!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews