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What Work Is: Poems
Winner of the National Book Award in 1991
“This collection amounts to a hymn of praise for all the workers of America. These proletarian heroes, with names like Lonnie, Loo, Sweet Pea, and Packy, work the furnaces, forges, slag heaps, assembly lines, and loading docks at places with unglamorous names like Brass Craft or Feinberg and Breslin’s First-Rate Plumbing and Plating. Only Studs Terkel’s Working approaches the pathos and beauty of this book. But Levine’s characters are also significant for their inner lives, not merely their jobs. They are unusually artistic, living ‘at the borders of dreams.’ One reads The Tempest ‘slowly to himself’; another ponders a diagonal chalk line drawn by his teacher to suggest a triangle, the roof of a barn, or the mysterious separation of ‘the dark from the dark.’ What Work Is ranks as a major work by a major poet . . . very accessible and utterly American in tone and language.”
—Daniel L. Guillory, Library Journal
“This collection amounts to a hymn of praise for all the workers of America. These proletarian heroes, with names like Lonnie, Loo, Sweet Pea, and Packy, work the furnaces, forges, slag heaps, assembly lines, and loading docks at places with unglamorous names like Brass Craft or Feinberg and Breslin’s First-Rate Plumbing and Plating. Only Studs Terkel’s Working approaches the pathos and beauty of this book. But Levine’s characters are also significant for their inner lives, not merely their jobs. They are unusually artistic, living ‘at the borders of dreams.’ One reads The Tempest ‘slowly to himself’; another ponders a diagonal chalk line drawn by his teacher to suggest a triangle, the roof of a barn, or the mysterious separation of ‘the dark from the dark.’ What Work Is ranks as a major work by a major poet . . . very accessible and utterly American in tone and language.”
—Daniel L. Guillory, Library Journal
77 pages, Paperback
First published April 30, 1991
49 people are currently reading
1930 people want to read
About the author
Philip Levine
138 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 - 30 of 117 reviews
November 10, 2018
Didn't exactly speak to me, but after a few poems I started to appreciate the beauty in describing hard labor, especially in Detroit in the 40s and 50s. This type of life is not where I expected to find poetic verse, and yet Levine was there and able to put it all into lines. I had my highlighter handy and marked many inspired images and phrases. Even though only a few of the poems were true winners for me personally, all were rewarding in their own way. I read poetry so rarely that it's always a treat--even when it isn't. If it's been a while since you last spent time with verse, this slim volume by one of the greats might be just what you need.
March 13, 2025
American Toughness
It is sad that we in the United States do not appreciate the strength and the variety of the poetry that our country has produced. A major instance of a contemporary poet whose writing deserves attention from a wider readership is Philip Levine. His book, "What Work Is" won the National Book Award for poetry in 1991. He has produced an impressive quantity of poetry which, in its very restraint and poignancy, can help bring meaning to people.
This is a short collection, consisting of four untitled sections. Section III consists of a single extended poem, "Burning" which is broadly autobiographical in character. The remaining three sections consist of a number of short poems with essentially two themes: the lives of the working poor prior to WWII and Levine's experiences as a boy growing up in Detroit. The poems with these themes overlap and are interspersed throughout the book with the earlier sections emphasizing vignettes of individuals doing the ordinary, desultory jobs that are the lot of most of us (such as "Coming Close", "Fire", "Every Blessed Day" and "What Work Is") while the latter section emphasizes Levine's Detroit experiences, the toughness of being a kid, his relationship with his brother, his love of boxing, and his exposure to Anti-Semitism. ("Coming of Age in Michigan", "The Right Cross", "The Sweetness of Bobby Hefka" "On the River".)
The poems are lucidly written with understatement and a lack of sentimentality which underscores the emotions and the passions they contain. It might be useful to compare these poems to the work of three other writers.
First, the poems reminded me of Walt Whitman, in their compassion for an attempt to understand the American worker. They lack Whitman's bravura and optimism, however, and content themselves with painting harshness and with emphasizing the tenacity people need to get by.
A writer with somewhat similar themes to Levine is the under-appreciated Victorian novelist, George Gissing in his books of lower class life in Victorian London such as The Nether World. Levine has a similar sort of attraction to the life of the poor, the unsuccessful and the down and out. He has at once a sympathy for his characters and a distance from them that Gissing seems to lack, for all his portrayals and descriptions.
A third writer is the late poet-novelist Charles Bukowski, a favorite of "underground" readers. Bukowski writes of ne'r do wells, prostitutes, and drunkards, -- as well as doing a lot of writing about himself. Levine has some of the same attraction to the scorned of society, but his people are the working poor, and their stories are told with restraint and dignity, unlike those of Bukowski, and also unlike the work of Bukowski, with literary skill and grace.
This is a book of poetry that has both the sadness and the grittiness of life and the toughness to understand and surmount it.
Robin Friedman
It is sad that we in the United States do not appreciate the strength and the variety of the poetry that our country has produced. A major instance of a contemporary poet whose writing deserves attention from a wider readership is Philip Levine. His book, "What Work Is" won the National Book Award for poetry in 1991. He has produced an impressive quantity of poetry which, in its very restraint and poignancy, can help bring meaning to people.
This is a short collection, consisting of four untitled sections. Section III consists of a single extended poem, "Burning" which is broadly autobiographical in character. The remaining three sections consist of a number of short poems with essentially two themes: the lives of the working poor prior to WWII and Levine's experiences as a boy growing up in Detroit. The poems with these themes overlap and are interspersed throughout the book with the earlier sections emphasizing vignettes of individuals doing the ordinary, desultory jobs that are the lot of most of us (such as "Coming Close", "Fire", "Every Blessed Day" and "What Work Is") while the latter section emphasizes Levine's Detroit experiences, the toughness of being a kid, his relationship with his brother, his love of boxing, and his exposure to Anti-Semitism. ("Coming of Age in Michigan", "The Right Cross", "The Sweetness of Bobby Hefka" "On the River".)
The poems are lucidly written with understatement and a lack of sentimentality which underscores the emotions and the passions they contain. It might be useful to compare these poems to the work of three other writers.
First, the poems reminded me of Walt Whitman, in their compassion for an attempt to understand the American worker. They lack Whitman's bravura and optimism, however, and content themselves with painting harshness and with emphasizing the tenacity people need to get by.
A writer with somewhat similar themes to Levine is the under-appreciated Victorian novelist, George Gissing in his books of lower class life in Victorian London such as The Nether World. Levine has a similar sort of attraction to the life of the poor, the unsuccessful and the down and out. He has at once a sympathy for his characters and a distance from them that Gissing seems to lack, for all his portrayals and descriptions.
A third writer is the late poet-novelist Charles Bukowski, a favorite of "underground" readers. Bukowski writes of ne'r do wells, prostitutes, and drunkards, -- as well as doing a lot of writing about himself. Levine has some of the same attraction to the scorned of society, but his people are the working poor, and their stories are told with restraint and dignity, unlike those of Bukowski, and also unlike the work of Bukowski, with literary skill and grace.
This is a book of poetry that has both the sadness and the grittiness of life and the toughness to understand and surmount it.
Robin Friedman
January 25, 2020
What is it that I love so much about these poems? A haunting lingeringness--that touches me more for the feel I get and for what it evokes--the air of pathos that is so Michigan, so Detroit, therefore a feeling irreplaceable for me. Of course, this all owes to the quality of a writer Levine is.
Favorites:
Coming of Age in Michigan
What Work Is
M. Degas Teaches Art & Science at Durfee Intermediate School
Favorites:
Coming of Age in Michigan
What Work Is
M. Degas Teaches Art & Science at Durfee Intermediate School
September 25, 2020
a few years ago, I saw a movie called 'paterson', about a bus driver that wrote poetry about the people and events in his town. it quickly became one of my favourite movies. this is the poetical companion to that movie. poetry welded out of the mechanical processes, the people in an industrial town, the past, present and the wiped-out future of blue collar workers, poetry in the everyday. this work is not a romanticization, it is a violent confrontation with the workers that only have each other on a daily basis. especially love the way the workers can never escape from signs of their work in the form of the stains and smells they bring home.
September 3, 2023
these did not speak to me.
March 20, 2019
Beautiful, almost painfully so at times.
May 29, 2013
I love Philip Levine's poems. They aren't like anything else in the landscape of American poetry. Levine, who is from Detroit and writes about blue collar laborers (he worked industrial jobs in his youth), has a passionate, clear, narrative form. The reader follows his poems in loops down the page; poems that are hard and filled with love. Poems that are dream-like, terrible yet hopeful. Levine is a rightful heir to Whitman and Lorca: a populist and a radical. The cover photo, "Spinner, cotton mill, 1908-1909," by the great Lewis Hine, perfectly compliments the poetry. This is one of Levine's best and most successful volumes. Some examples:
from "Among Children"
I walk among the rows of bowed heads--
the children are sleeping through fourth grade
so as to be ready for what is ahead,
the monumental boredom of junior high
and the rush forward tearing their wings
loose and turning their eyes forever inward.
These are the children of Flint, their fathers
work at the spark plug factory or truck
bottled water in 5 gallon sea-blue jugs
to the windows of the suburbs. You can see
already how their backs have thickened,
how their small hands, soiled by pig iron,
leap and stutter even in dreams. I would like
to sit down among them and read slowly
from The Book of Job...
from "The Sweetness of Bobby Hefka"
The last time I saw Bobby Hefka he was driving
a milk truck for Dairy Cream, he was married,
he had a little girl, he still dreamed
of going to medical school. He listened
in sorrow to what had become of me. He handed
me an icy quart of milk, a gift
we both held on to for a silent moment
while the great city roared around us, the trucks
honking and racing their engines to make him move.
His eyes were wide open. Bobby Hefka loved me.
from "Among Children"
I walk among the rows of bowed heads--
the children are sleeping through fourth grade
so as to be ready for what is ahead,
the monumental boredom of junior high
and the rush forward tearing their wings
loose and turning their eyes forever inward.
These are the children of Flint, their fathers
work at the spark plug factory or truck
bottled water in 5 gallon sea-blue jugs
to the windows of the suburbs. You can see
already how their backs have thickened,
how their small hands, soiled by pig iron,
leap and stutter even in dreams. I would like
to sit down among them and read slowly
from The Book of Job...
from "The Sweetness of Bobby Hefka"
The last time I saw Bobby Hefka he was driving
a milk truck for Dairy Cream, he was married,
he had a little girl, he still dreamed
of going to medical school. He listened
in sorrow to what had become of me. He handed
me an icy quart of milk, a gift
we both held on to for a silent moment
while the great city roared around us, the trucks
honking and racing their engines to make him move.
His eyes were wide open. Bobby Hefka loved me.
June 18, 2016
This was one of my favorite collection of poems when it was first published and I began taking poetry seriously. I am not a narrative poet at all, but these are the poems I wish I could write, if I had been a story-teller. Tough and spare in style (I couldn't help but notice how all of his lines end with hard nouns), skeptical of ideas and authority, and masterful in the way Levine recollects and lays out the personal, formative narratives of his youth and beyond (and, by the way, also those around him: his brother and sister, his friends and co-workers, and his son, in later poems, are all given the same attention), these poems tell the story of one person's escape (if you can call it that) from Detroit's assembly lines into the Central Valley of California. The poems weave in and out of history, focusing on pivotal moments (drinking gin for the first time, a childhood adventure concerning the "Lamb of God", riding the bus on the way home from work, etc.) to create a vivid portrait of a an emerging self rising above his given place in the world.
Ed Hirsch, in his best-seller How To Read a Poem, refers to this collection as the single best collection of poems about work and the working class in the twentieth century. I couldn't agree more. Show me another one that comes close. And apparently, everyone else thought it was astonishing, too--it won the National Book Award in Poetry for 1991.
Ed Hirsch, in his best-seller How To Read a Poem, refers to this collection as the single best collection of poems about work and the working class in the twentieth century. I couldn't agree more. Show me another one that comes close. And apparently, everyone else thought it was astonishing, too--it won the National Book Award in Poetry for 1991.
January 8, 2015
Amazing. What Work Is is one of my favorite poems, and the book itself is filled with dozens of others that might as well be. Philip Levine has a perfect knack for capturing experiences that I think are common to, or at least feel common to, most people. I've now read this twice and will read it again, probably multiple times. I cannot say I have ever felt anything more than passing interest when someone was named Poet Laureate, but that changed when Philip Levine was named this year. I will definitely read as much more of his poetry as I can find, but I suspect What Work Is will be the book to which I repeatedly turn through the years.
January 24, 2022
There are already some amazing reviews for this collection of poetry, so I’ll confine mine simply to why I gave this five stars.
Several of the poems describe work, as the title implies, and what many of us know as America. Many men in my family worked physically hard: factories, migrant farm workers, punch in, punch out. Bone deep and bone tired, moving restlessly from one job to the next or forever stuck. Levine lets everything unfold about America - this America - in such a lyrical and pure way that every man in his poems became every man in my family.
This collection is more than what work is, however. It’s about experiencing seasons, growing up, lost dreams, loving and living life. It is overwhelming human and represents the best and worst of America.
Several of the poems describe work, as the title implies, and what many of us know as America. Many men in my family worked physically hard: factories, migrant farm workers, punch in, punch out. Bone deep and bone tired, moving restlessly from one job to the next or forever stuck. Levine lets everything unfold about America - this America - in such a lyrical and pure way that every man in his poems became every man in my family.
This collection is more than what work is, however. It’s about experiencing seasons, growing up, lost dreams, loving and living life. It is overwhelming human and represents the best and worst of America.
June 30, 2008
"You have begun to separate the dark from the dark."
This line from "M. Degas Teaches Art & Science at Durfee Intermediate School" hints at the depths of Levin's poetry.
Suggestion: Check out Diego Rivera's famous "Industrial" murals, at Detroit Institute of Art while reading this book.
This line from "M. Degas Teaches Art & Science at Durfee Intermediate School" hints at the depths of Levin's poetry.
Suggestion: Check out Diego Rivera's famous "Industrial" murals, at Detroit Institute of Art while reading this book.
January 20, 2025
A while ago, my poetry professor mentioned having known Levine in some way, maybe a friend, maybe a colleague. I wonder now what it must have been like to talk to him. Did he speak like he speaks in these poems, with such fluidity and clarity that it feels like slowly pouring fresh water over your head? Or did he see it all around him, watch you, and know some secret he could only describe in tandem with metaphors about the wind or smoke or heat?
I wonder who else has cried over these. I wonder if it’s possible not to.
Favorites: What Work Is, Burned, On the River
I wonder who else has cried over these. I wonder if it’s possible not to.
Favorites: What Work Is, Burned, On the River
August 8, 2018
I just loved it. Poetry that takes the daily routines or moments of oneslife or the dreayiness of it all and turns it into something else is my favorite kind of poetry. Poems that feel more like narratives or glimpses of life, I think are the kind of poems that can make people really connect.
July 29, 2025
Philip Levine has written about everything you’ve ever felt and also he moved to the central valley so that’s another reason i should be there
“on schedule he comes at noon / or not at all / his only free time / so he can see the painters eye / the hulking shape of warehouse grays / take hold and shimmer a moment / in the blur of air until the stones / darken like wounds and become nothing.”
this is exactly how i feel looking at an amazon warehouse
“on schedule he comes at noon / or not at all / his only free time / so he can see the painters eye / the hulking shape of warehouse grays / take hold and shimmer a moment / in the blur of air until the stones / darken like wounds and become nothing.”
this is exactly how i feel looking at an amazon warehouse
Read
January 22, 2012Those who have read the poems that Philip Levine has produced in his thirty years of writing know that perhaps no other living poet has earned so fully the right to tell us "what work is." The various "grease-jobs," as he calls them, held in his native Detroit in his earlier days have provided him through fifteen books with a wealth of material that he has transmuted into fierce and gritty praise songs of the dignity of human labor. Levine's poems, in this new collection and before, celebrate the ability of men and women not only to endure but also to transcend, through love and its various forms of communion, the grinding harshness, exhaustion, and despair that are still the daily lot of too many in this country.
Levine has long favored the narrative form, delivering the stories of his poems in a passion-charged voice whose declarative force is reminiscent of Yeats's at his most ireful. While Levine can scarcely be said to have mellowed, part of the mastery of the poems in WHAT WORK IS derives from their dazzling modulation of tone, which in "My Grave," for example, ranges from a whisper to a shout and strikes several notes, some of them viciously funny, in between. Nor is the poet reluctant to depart from story line. Levine's lyric asides and expansions in a poem like "Innocence," where he describes tree-covered ground being ravaged for an expressway -- "the earth / held and trembled before it gave, and the stumps / howled as they turned their black, prized groins / skyward for the first times in their lives" -- are moments in which we feel him lavish love upon the sometimes unbeautiful things of this world. Such moments alone are worth the price of the volume, as are the concluding lines of the title poem, which are Levine at his best and most necessary.
(originally published in PLOUGHSHARES)
Levine has long favored the narrative form, delivering the stories of his poems in a passion-charged voice whose declarative force is reminiscent of Yeats's at his most ireful. While Levine can scarcely be said to have mellowed, part of the mastery of the poems in WHAT WORK IS derives from their dazzling modulation of tone, which in "My Grave," for example, ranges from a whisper to a shout and strikes several notes, some of them viciously funny, in between. Nor is the poet reluctant to depart from story line. Levine's lyric asides and expansions in a poem like "Innocence," where he describes tree-covered ground being ravaged for an expressway -- "the earth / held and trembled before it gave, and the stumps / howled as they turned their black, prized groins / skyward for the first times in their lives" -- are moments in which we feel him lavish love upon the sometimes unbeautiful things of this world. Such moments alone are worth the price of the volume, as are the concluding lines of the title poem, which are Levine at his best and most necessary.
(originally published in PLOUGHSHARES)
March 21, 2014
Levine's book of poetry, What Work Is, is exactly that. A collection of poems that define work, the kind we do for money, the kind we do for love, the kind we do for understanding. They're beautiful, artful narratives chock full of vivid imagery.
For example, in the poem Innocence, Levine describes how earthmovers:
...gripped the chained and stripped trunks,
hunched down and roared their engines, the earth
held and trembled before it gave, and the stumps
howled as they turned their black, prized groins
skyward for the first time in their lives...
The company I work for is expanding, so I hear those howls quite a bit these days. But that isn't the only reason why this passage just kills me. There's also that recognition in my own life, a feeling everyone feels at one time or another. The horror of being exposed, being ripped from your roots, and seeing the sky for the first time. It's the death of a tree, yes. But it's also the death of innocence.
And there's a lot more where that came from in the 77 pages of this book, with rarely a miss. I think my only complaint is in the longer poem Burned, which just seemed too long, and derivative of the other poems surrounding it. But that may be more the fault of the book, reading these poems all together, and not the fault of the poem itself.
Good stuff, an intense and rewarding read.
For example, in the poem Innocence, Levine describes how earthmovers:
...gripped the chained and stripped trunks,
hunched down and roared their engines, the earth
held and trembled before it gave, and the stumps
howled as they turned their black, prized groins
skyward for the first time in their lives...
The company I work for is expanding, so I hear those howls quite a bit these days. But that isn't the only reason why this passage just kills me. There's also that recognition in my own life, a feeling everyone feels at one time or another. The horror of being exposed, being ripped from your roots, and seeing the sky for the first time. It's the death of a tree, yes. But it's also the death of innocence.
And there's a lot more where that came from in the 77 pages of this book, with rarely a miss. I think my only complaint is in the longer poem Burned, which just seemed too long, and derivative of the other poems surrounding it. But that may be more the fault of the book, reading these poems all together, and not the fault of the poem itself.
Good stuff, an intense and rewarding read.
January 22, 2009
This collection of poems transformed my life. Levine's ability to expose grandeur through the purportedly mundane will inspire you to see life for what it truly is: hard, dirty, unlucky, magnificent.
September 28, 2021
Some poems that have clutched at my bones
September 12, 2022
five stars if only for "what work is"
October 29, 2011
The poems here largely remind me of a scene in Steve McQueen's film Hunger in which a man mops the hall of the cell block. Watching the scene, it's like he's starting at the end of the hall and (given the slow-core poetic of the film) you're damn sure the camera will follow him down the whole hall. So at the beginning it's a groan. Then it's boring. Then something happens just passed half way down the hall. This guy's mopping is like saying something really difficult to put into words. And, then the mop water it rushing toward the camera and just as the scene ends it's like you're on the edge of you seat hoping to see what's being said and then in a rush it's over.
So often in Levine's poems the beginning feels plodding and old and kinda tired. But, something transcendent happens near the middle. Lyrical arcs begin to spread out in different directions. Then just as the poem ends the whole vibe has changed.
On the whole, I dug it. Though you kinda know with Levine the stuff will stay pretty middle of the road. No calls to revolution or rhapsody. Maybe a few calls to dinner. Maybe a stray fire engine. I wish he'd do a whole big weird/speculative thing in the line of his poem "Angel Butcher" at some point.
So often in Levine's poems the beginning feels plodding and old and kinda tired. But, something transcendent happens near the middle. Lyrical arcs begin to spread out in different directions. Then just as the poem ends the whole vibe has changed.
On the whole, I dug it. Though you kinda know with Levine the stuff will stay pretty middle of the road. No calls to revolution or rhapsody. Maybe a few calls to dinner. Maybe a stray fire engine. I wish he'd do a whole big weird/speculative thing in the line of his poem "Angel Butcher" at some point.
December 22, 2011
Right here is a collection to put hair on yer chest!
Of all the Philip Levine books out there, I feel like I started with the most stereotypical. All the reviews of his work highlight the gritty, working man quality of his writing, and I grabbed the book that’s almost entirely devoted to those slices of blue-collar labor.
I’m not much of a poetry enthusiast, but for my poetry writing class I had to pick a poet and make a presentation about their work. Since the poets I actually had some familiarity with all have a strong basis in what I was taught in high school (the usual Frost, Poe, Whitman selection) I decided to go with an artist chosen recommended by the teacher, which apparently had a lot to do with my “unsentimental” style of writing. It turned out to be a good judgment call.
These poems are essentially lyrically essays, and I’m fine with that.
Of all the Philip Levine books out there, I feel like I started with the most stereotypical. All the reviews of his work highlight the gritty, working man quality of his writing, and I grabbed the book that’s almost entirely devoted to those slices of blue-collar labor.
I’m not much of a poetry enthusiast, but for my poetry writing class I had to pick a poet and make a presentation about their work. Since the poets I actually had some familiarity with all have a strong basis in what I was taught in high school (the usual Frost, Poe, Whitman selection) I decided to go with an artist chosen recommended by the teacher, which apparently had a lot to do with my “unsentimental” style of writing. It turned out to be a good judgment call.
These poems are essentially lyrically essays, and I’m fine with that.
March 6, 2013
I would have given this a five star rating had the focus on work and workplace-related images and insights persisted throughout, but the last fifth or so of the collection veered off into the personal and more conventionally poetic. That said, this is a fascinating cycle of poems that underscore the reality that, at some level at least, there is inherent dignity in all work, which is odd given how badly we tend to speak of it at the same time that we acknowledge its necessity and seek it passionately when we lack it. Perhaps Baudelaire said it best: "one must work, if not from inclination, then from despair, because all things considered, work is less boring than amusement."
May 10, 2012
My ongoing trek to read every poem ever written and published by Levine continues. For me, "What Work Is" is not as good as "The Simple Truth" and, as a result, I would give it 4.5 stars. Still excellent; I just thought "The Simple Truth" was superior. I may also be a bit biased considering that his Pulitzer Prize winning book is what really got me thinking that I wanted to write poetry like his someday. It was my watershed moment as an aspiring poet and writer. If you like Levine, check it out.
December 17, 2011
Beautiful working-class portraits from the current poet laureate. Phillip Levine is a joy to read.
From "The Right Cross"
We rise, drop our faces
in cold water and face the prospect
of a day like the last one from which
we have not recovered...
fight for nothing
except the beauty of their own balance
the precision of each punch.
I hated to fight. I saw each blow
in a sequence of events leading
finally to a winner and a loser.
Yet I fought as boys were told to do,
and won and lost as men must.
From "The Right Cross"
We rise, drop our faces
in cold water and face the prospect
of a day like the last one from which
we have not recovered...
fight for nothing
except the beauty of their own balance
the precision of each punch.
I hated to fight. I saw each blow
in a sequence of events leading
finally to a winner and a loser.
Yet I fought as boys were told to do,
and won and lost as men must.
December 8, 2012
A cataclysm occurred in my life while I was reading this book back in the summer. It was only recently that, pulling my life back together, I discovered that I hadn't actually read the last half dozen poems. And so I nearly missed "The Seventh Summer" and "The Sweetness of Bobby Hefka." That would have been most unfortunate.
Many thanks to the friend who gave me this book to recover by. Many hours of pleasure in this volume.
Many thanks to the friend who gave me this book to recover by. Many hours of pleasure in this volume.
April 9, 2015
Reading some poetry for National Poetry Month and this seemed like a good place to start. I heard Levine read some of his poems at the National Book Festival a few years ago and really enjoyed them. He recently passed away and so was on my mind again. I found that I connected more to the poems I had heard him read out loud and wished he or someone else skilled at such things could read the others to me. I do like poetry best that way.
October 20, 2012
You will taste machine oil and smell ice blocks in this collection of poetry by the former Poet Laureate of the United States. What the Romantics attempted to do in celebration of the common man is actually accomplished by Philip Levine in this collection. Levine delivers the rotten teeth and bald tires of a life half produced on the production lines of Detroit.
January 12, 2015
I did like it.
I guess I have to get used to reading poetry. It's not my cup of tea. Mainly because I haven't read much throughout my life.
But I felt captivated by some of the lines in this book.
It is sure a re-read.
I guess I have to get used to reading poetry. It's not my cup of tea. Mainly because I haven't read much throughout my life.
But I felt captivated by some of the lines in this book.
It is sure a re-read.
April 2, 2015
Powerful and gritty poetry by an urban master.
April 9, 2018
For the People
When discussions of economics, war on America, and issues of the working class are in motion, we place it with politics; however, poetry covers every spectrum of this when it comes to the work of Philip Levine. Hitting on sensitive topics such as the effects of physical labor, the clash of classes, family, relationships, and personal loss, Levine goes in very direct in a way to bring light to these subjects that a lot of people, as well as politicians, are afraid to. Some may say it is controversial, yet others may believe that it is necessary to discuss politics, and concerns for the working class. As someone who grew up in during The Great Depression, Levine’s knowledge reflects on his perspective, and that perspective and knowledge still applies in the present day. Overall, this book of poetry covers all aspects of work and love.
Levine’s four-part book of poems, What Work Is, stands very true to the overview of what points he is trying to convey through his writing. This poetry book gives an overall understanding of what it is like to work hard, countless hours every day just to fight off poverty. He allows the working-class readers to engage in the feelings that weigh into these poems by explaining how tough life is for the working-class people, as well as how tough it is from the upper-middle class workers. The way he uses theme and style to express his feelings, help to engage the readers with the characters, as well as with Levine himself.
Levine’s use of free verse in his poems give the sense of freedom and open-mindedness to think it whatever way the reader chooses to perceive. Within that lies a sleek rhythm in each poem that either speeds up the metabolism of the reader’s mind or slows it down. His use of line structure in Fear and Fame, tie into the rhythm that lies within the poem. One part of the line expresses his work as a fearful and tough job, and the other half expresses the thrill and praise of it that expresses fame. What makes that such a big deal is because aside from the them, they style used in the poem explains the title. He writes:
Half an hour to dress, wide rubber hip boots,
Gauntlets to the elbow, a plastic helmet
Like a knight’s but with a little glass window
That kept steaming over, and a respirator
To save my smoke-stained lungs.
Levine’s use of line breaks creates a compare and contrast to the job that consists of physical labor, and expectation of fame that is to come from such a job. Imagery is used to visually show the reader what his job is, as well as it is to show the dangerousness of the job at hand.
Word choices also allow us to understand the seriousness of it which creates a tone that brings in fear. Explaining that he descends into a dim world and referencing a pickling tank, gives reason for that fear. Giving details about his wet boots and mentioning nitric and sulphuric, all help to explain his job and the way he envisions it. He later gives clues to signify that he deals with plumbing, and because of his hard labor, he expects a praise to come at the end of his work being done. In the end of the poem, Levine does a great job at showing the feelings of the character once reality sets in. He uses the term “adventurer,” to express that his job is an adventure to him and refers to his work clothes as the costume of his trade, once again comparing and contrasting reality and work as he sees it.
In the poem Coming Close, Levine touches on the hardships of a working woman. He poses the question, “Is she a woman?” This is done as an introduction to explain why the question is being asked. He explains again by using imagery. He goes on to describe her muscular arms and the dirt on her face as to boldly convey that this is not a job for a woman. He even implies that she must hang a tie in the locker room. He uses the tie in that phrase as a symbolic reference to a man.
Levine, leaves the imagination up to the audience in this poem by syncing closeness to love and saying that the woman would ask,
“Why? Not the old why
Of why must I spend five nights a week?
Just, “Why?” Even if by some magic
You knew, you wouldn’t dare speak
For the fear of her laughter, which now
You have anyway as she places the five
Tapering fingers of her filthy hand
On the arm of your white shirt to mark
You for your own, now and forever.
The word “close,” in this poem has multiple meanings. Getting closer to see her for who she is, feeling her touch, and physically getting close are all possibilities that Levine includes in this piece. However, he does not stray away from his perspective on the effects of physical labor as it pertains to the working class. However, he brings in the feeling of how a woman can affect one’s feelings toward her by showing his concern for her after her hard work. This is something that both woman and men deal with in the present day, and Levine leaves it open for discussion.
Word Count: 906
When discussions of economics, war on America, and issues of the working class are in motion, we place it with politics; however, poetry covers every spectrum of this when it comes to the work of Philip Levine. Hitting on sensitive topics such as the effects of physical labor, the clash of classes, family, relationships, and personal loss, Levine goes in very direct in a way to bring light to these subjects that a lot of people, as well as politicians, are afraid to. Some may say it is controversial, yet others may believe that it is necessary to discuss politics, and concerns for the working class. As someone who grew up in during The Great Depression, Levine’s knowledge reflects on his perspective, and that perspective and knowledge still applies in the present day. Overall, this book of poetry covers all aspects of work and love.
Levine’s four-part book of poems, What Work Is, stands very true to the overview of what points he is trying to convey through his writing. This poetry book gives an overall understanding of what it is like to work hard, countless hours every day just to fight off poverty. He allows the working-class readers to engage in the feelings that weigh into these poems by explaining how tough life is for the working-class people, as well as how tough it is from the upper-middle class workers. The way he uses theme and style to express his feelings, help to engage the readers with the characters, as well as with Levine himself.
Levine’s use of free verse in his poems give the sense of freedom and open-mindedness to think it whatever way the reader chooses to perceive. Within that lies a sleek rhythm in each poem that either speeds up the metabolism of the reader’s mind or slows it down. His use of line structure in Fear and Fame, tie into the rhythm that lies within the poem. One part of the line expresses his work as a fearful and tough job, and the other half expresses the thrill and praise of it that expresses fame. What makes that such a big deal is because aside from the them, they style used in the poem explains the title. He writes:
Half an hour to dress, wide rubber hip boots,
Gauntlets to the elbow, a plastic helmet
Like a knight’s but with a little glass window
That kept steaming over, and a respirator
To save my smoke-stained lungs.
Levine’s use of line breaks creates a compare and contrast to the job that consists of physical labor, and expectation of fame that is to come from such a job. Imagery is used to visually show the reader what his job is, as well as it is to show the dangerousness of the job at hand.
Word choices also allow us to understand the seriousness of it which creates a tone that brings in fear. Explaining that he descends into a dim world and referencing a pickling tank, gives reason for that fear. Giving details about his wet boots and mentioning nitric and sulphuric, all help to explain his job and the way he envisions it. He later gives clues to signify that he deals with plumbing, and because of his hard labor, he expects a praise to come at the end of his work being done. In the end of the poem, Levine does a great job at showing the feelings of the character once reality sets in. He uses the term “adventurer,” to express that his job is an adventure to him and refers to his work clothes as the costume of his trade, once again comparing and contrasting reality and work as he sees it.
In the poem Coming Close, Levine touches on the hardships of a working woman. He poses the question, “Is she a woman?” This is done as an introduction to explain why the question is being asked. He explains again by using imagery. He goes on to describe her muscular arms and the dirt on her face as to boldly convey that this is not a job for a woman. He even implies that she must hang a tie in the locker room. He uses the tie in that phrase as a symbolic reference to a man.
Levine, leaves the imagination up to the audience in this poem by syncing closeness to love and saying that the woman would ask,
“Why? Not the old why
Of why must I spend five nights a week?
Just, “Why?” Even if by some magic
You knew, you wouldn’t dare speak
For the fear of her laughter, which now
You have anyway as she places the five
Tapering fingers of her filthy hand
On the arm of your white shirt to mark
You for your own, now and forever.
The word “close,” in this poem has multiple meanings. Getting closer to see her for who she is, feeling her touch, and physically getting close are all possibilities that Levine includes in this piece. However, he does not stray away from his perspective on the effects of physical labor as it pertains to the working class. However, he brings in the feeling of how a woman can affect one’s feelings toward her by showing his concern for her after her hard work. This is something that both woman and men deal with in the present day, and Levine leaves it open for discussion.
Word Count: 906
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