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1933 Poems
Book by Levine, Philip
- GenresPoetryLiterary Fiction
68 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
2 people are currently reading
17 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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February 16, 20111933 by Philip Levine
Philip Levine has a very dark style of writing, in 1933. Throughout the book his poems are very consistent in appearance, but at the same time he varies the stanza breaks to make each poem different, but still fit the overall collection.
Levine’s form of writing is in slender columns, and he uses mostly enjambed lines. An example can be found in the poem 1933 “the voice in the dark asking / he drove the car all the way to the river / where the ships burned / he rang with keys and coins / he knew the animals and their names / touched the nose of the horse / and kicked the German dog away”(Levine, 64). For the example you can see short lines and lack of punctuation help to build the momentum of the poem, the readers eye is forced down the page.
However in a few cases Levine has poems that are filled with end stopped lines. These poems were the ones that really stuck out to me, because they were so different than the collection. An example from Zaydee, “He laughs in the movies, cries in the streets, / the judges in their gowns are monkeys, / the lawyers mice, a cop is a fat hand. / He holds up a strawberry and bites it.”(Levine, 3) This poem had a tremendous amount of drama, because the punctuation slows the reader down, each line I read had emphasis, I read each word and received the full meaning. This example also has longer lines than what is generally found through the rest of the collection, the longer lines, helping to draw out the poems
In a few of his poems Levine did something that really stuck out to me, he started a stanza with a question and then in an abstract manner he answer the question to finish off the stanza. The poem starts out very profound, then Levine adds personal touches to make the poem relatable and in a way it feels like a flashback.
The author uses a lot of colors to describe “Along the trail smears / of yellow, baby tufts / tousled by wind,”(Levine, 31) “groves, fields of tall grasses / with black pools of water underneath.”(Levine, 6) The colors really add a lot to the text, it helps give the mind the extra element of description that really brings the poem to life. People relate colors to feelings, so by adding colors the reader is in the state of mind the author is trying to project. Yellow is a fun, bright warm color, and black is deep dark, almost scary color, giving the reader a feeling of uncertainty. Colors are a brilliant way for an author to project both a feeling and a setting at the same time.
Although I usually don’t enjoy the darker style of writing, I really enjoyed Levine’s collection of poetry. His style of writing is so descriptive, his imagery was brilliant and I felt as though he was painting these dark pictures in my mind.
Philip Levine has a very dark style of writing, in 1933. Throughout the book his poems are very consistent in appearance, but at the same time he varies the stanza breaks to make each poem different, but still fit the overall collection.
Levine’s form of writing is in slender columns, and he uses mostly enjambed lines. An example can be found in the poem 1933 “the voice in the dark asking / he drove the car all the way to the river / where the ships burned / he rang with keys and coins / he knew the animals and their names / touched the nose of the horse / and kicked the German dog away”(Levine, 64). For the example you can see short lines and lack of punctuation help to build the momentum of the poem, the readers eye is forced down the page.
However in a few cases Levine has poems that are filled with end stopped lines. These poems were the ones that really stuck out to me, because they were so different than the collection. An example from Zaydee, “He laughs in the movies, cries in the streets, / the judges in their gowns are monkeys, / the lawyers mice, a cop is a fat hand. / He holds up a strawberry and bites it.”(Levine, 3) This poem had a tremendous amount of drama, because the punctuation slows the reader down, each line I read had emphasis, I read each word and received the full meaning. This example also has longer lines than what is generally found through the rest of the collection, the longer lines, helping to draw out the poems
In a few of his poems Levine did something that really stuck out to me, he started a stanza with a question and then in an abstract manner he answer the question to finish off the stanza. The poem starts out very profound, then Levine adds personal touches to make the poem relatable and in a way it feels like a flashback.
The author uses a lot of colors to describe “Along the trail smears / of yellow, baby tufts / tousled by wind,”(Levine, 31) “groves, fields of tall grasses / with black pools of water underneath.”(Levine, 6) The colors really add a lot to the text, it helps give the mind the extra element of description that really brings the poem to life. People relate colors to feelings, so by adding colors the reader is in the state of mind the author is trying to project. Yellow is a fun, bright warm color, and black is deep dark, almost scary color, giving the reader a feeling of uncertainty. Colors are a brilliant way for an author to project both a feeling and a setting at the same time.
Although I usually don’t enjoy the darker style of writing, I really enjoyed Levine’s collection of poetry. His style of writing is so descriptive, his imagery was brilliant and I felt as though he was painting these dark pictures in my mind.
June 16, 2009
Philip Levine is one of the half dozen greatest poets of my life. This volume, which was published in the early 1970s, is about what happened during the year that he was 5. The poems are written in a style so prosaic that they seem, but are not, unstructured. They have the profound simplicity of life, the ashes in their tray.
I've read the collection many times and never tired of it..
I've read the collection many times and never tired of it..
February 17, 2013
A sort of American version (in verse) of Distant Voices, Still Lives (although the father seems much nicer).
Planning on reading much more of Levine's work.
Planning on reading much more of Levine's work.
February 28, 2013
Wistful blankverse without destination or resolution from the former Detroiter. Levine takes you to the moment of heartache, death, a meeting setting the stage lets you fill in the rest.
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January 6, 2017811 L665b 1974
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews