One for the Rose

by Philip Levine

A reissuing of One for the Rose, a collection of poetry by Philip Levine.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Philip 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.

Reviews

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating 4.5

Philip Levine's poems in One for the Rose are a particular type of working-class fantasia, ruthlessly simple and absolutely impossible. Many of these poems are just about being a worker, but at the same time many of them are catalogs of magic and miracles. You can see the man who would write What Work Is and News of the World in this, although I think there may be a little more supernatural fire in this book and his more "realistic" poems I think were better in the later connections than in this one (which is why I have rounded down from 4.5 stars). The poems of magic are pieces like "On My Own," which ends,

SUre, now you
know, now it's obvious, what with the light
of the Lord streaming through the nine
windows of my soul and the music of rain
following in my wake and the ordinary air
on fire every blessed day I waken the world.

or "Never Before" which opens,

Never before
have I gone down
on my hands and knees
and beeged the earth to stop turning
in its burning sleep

This tonal quality fills the magic and builds itself further until it possesses echoes in the poems of work. Like "Making Soda Pop" which is blunt and clear but does sound similar:

The big driver said
he only fucked Jews. Eddie smiled
and folded his glasses
into their little blue
snap case and put the case
into his lunch bag.

Formally and structurally, these poems were straightforward pieces of free verse, and it works for these poems. They trip and float along the lines with some very well-placed line breaks, like the beginning of "The Fox", "I think I must have lived / once before, not as a man or woman". My favorite pieces were "The Poem of Flight", "Salt", "Never Before", "One", "The Doctor of Starlight", "The First Truth", "Belief", "Sources", "Buying Earth", and "On My Own". These, I thought, had the most presence, which made them much more effective than the rest of the book.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Levine brings a gentle narrative observation to his poems, simple scenes that reveal the power and mystery of the everyday, sometimes in memory, sometimes lamenting, sometimes rejoicing... "...Instead I was born/ in the wrong year and in the wrong place,/ and I made my way so slowly and badly/ that I remember every single turn,/ and each one smells like an overblown rose,/ yellow, American, beautiful, and true."

[Peggy Heitmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually went back and counted the number of poems I like in this book. The answer is slightly less than half. However, I do like the experience of reading his work. He definitely has recurring images of death, self-made man, choice, moon, mundane over the significant, and bad breath. I especially like the poem,"Depot Bay" where he says, "and one bird/going out on a column of light/ and nothing ever returning/except the wind, wordless/and wild, filling everything.

[Melanie H · Rating 5 out of 5]

This made me want to throw down everything and give my life up to poetry. Not that I could ever (ever) produce such beauty, but still I try.

"One for the rose" just made a strong appearance in my top ten poems of all time and I'm considering committing it to memory.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very readable poems about everyday life. The poems often mention Detroit, Michigan, and Toledo since that is where he was born and lived for many years.

[Miami University Libraries]

King Library (2nd floor) | PS3562.E9 O53 1981

[Mills College Library]

811 L665o 1981