Breath: Poems

by Philip Levine

Always a poet of memory and invention, Philip Levine looks back at his own life as well as the adventures of his ancestors, his relatives, and his friends, and at their rites of passage into an America of victories and betrayals. He transports us back to the street where he was born “early in the final industrial century” to help us envision an America he’s known from the 1930s to the present. His subjects include his brothers, a great-uncle who gave up on America and returned to czarist Russia, a father who survived unspeakable losses, the artists and musicians who inspired him, and fellow workers at the factory who shared the best and worst of his coming of age.

Throughout the collection Levine rejoices in song–Dinah Washington wailing from a jukebox in midtown Manhattan; Della Daubien hymning on the crosstown streetcar; Max Roach and Clifford Brown at a forgotten Detroit jazz palace; the prayers offered to God by an immigrant uncle dreaming of the Judean hills; the hoarse notes of a factory worker who, completing another late shift, serenades the sleeping streets.

Like all of Levine’s poems, these are a testament to the durability of love, the strength of the human spirit, the persistence of life in the presence of the coming dark.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

96 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

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

[Rosa Lee Mullins · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the poetry collection titled “Breath,” published in 2004 in New York by Alfred A. Knopf, Philip Levine writes about people he remembers from his past with straightforward lyrical and elegiac lines. The collection includes thirty-one poems divided into four chapters. Some major themes within the poetry collection are death, the power of loss, loneliness, hope, as well as compassion, particularly for life. Recurring motifs throughout his poems are people who are now dead, plants native to particular places that he travels to, including California, Detroit, Ontario, and New Jersey among others, and the particular habits of each of the people he mentions. With perceptive and sharp acuity, Levine recollects these memories into vivid stories written in free verse and abundant imagery. Some poems are divided by stanzas, while others are written as one entire stanza. Standard punctuation is used to the effect that the reader is not reading a poem but actual prose. There is an emphasis on life and, by default, death. Levine comments on the human condition extensively – at times he talks about death’s inevitability with a bitter tone, and other times he comments on the beauty of being able to be a living creature. Furthermore, he writes these poems of persons from the past as if obligated to them, to prevent them from being forgotten, to remind the world that they once existed and mattered. By doing so, he reminds readers that there is a large, clear distinction between the living and the dead and it all revolves around the title – breath. In order to capture these people accurately, he describes vividly the environment: “the new grass rising in the hills / the cows loitering in the morning chill,” “the plum trees / have burned like candles in the cup of earth, / the almond has shed its pure blossoms,” “the eucalyptus / and the overbearing odor of orange blossoms.” He describes how the people used to be, returns their life to them and, by doing so, confronts mortality. In the third chapter which consists of one poem but broken into twenty-five 15-line parts with two stanzas, comprised of an octet and a septet, he dedicates an entire part to a particular person, recalling as many people as possible. The stories of people who have passed are vast, as the author himself has aged considerably at the time of this collection’s publication. Levine also uses particular dates, pinpointing a certain year when an old friend’s “desk sat empty.” Those simple memories are what he remembers, and it gives these people their life back. The poems build largely on tone, as Levine’s tone differs from poem to poem. In some poems, he writes of how dearly he misses his friends, such as in “Storms,” where he writes “All my life I’ve been / waiting for them, those I needed, / to come back, and now I could feel / him slipping away.” Other times, death overwhelms him to the point that life itself feels overwhelming: “I can see the fields of wildflowers on fire until / I have to look away from so much life.” There are also times when he confronts the nature of death: “Time does not stop.” The pain brought upon those who continue to live while others die is also delineated by Levine, who describes in the poem titled “Home for the Holidays” the expectations and imaginary dialogue of objects in an empty house; “Praise the Lord, said the radio,” and “Nothing to do, chants the toilet.” Levine’s rather blunt and tender writing helps evoke death and its inevitability, while also pointing out the beauty of life. For readers, this collection of poems gives great insight into mankind’s vulnerability and overwhelming strength.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is like a mechanic that lets you look over their shoulder as they work and tells you how the pieces fit. Sometimes you can follow along, and sometimes you get lost, but the whole time you feel like they know what they're doing. That feeling teeters on the point between faith and trust and always leans.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered Phillip Levine's poetry when he died. My friend, Ruth Bavetta, posted one of his poems and I knew that I should read more. I bought this collection, his last I believe, and have been parceling them out to myself since February. Initially, I loved the references to Michigan, where I live, but grew to appreciate so much more than that. I find myself reading lines over and over again that evoke the whole range of the human condition. I think Levine's poetry is going to be with me for a while. Today, I bought his New Selected Poems.

[Kitty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Philip Levine's work for its seamless flow which sets up a line or thought that stabs right at something you feel is important. The poems in breath make reference to Machado, music, but also, breath as the language of the wind.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breath, by Philip Levine is a poetic journey through times in his life and the lives of ancestors, spanning centuries up to the present. The images presented in each poem are stunning and will wring an emotional response from the reader. He uses a variety of formats, some of which read like literature traditionally recognized as poetry and others are long ruminations on a the life of a person, a place, a special moment or a spiritual experience. The poem, "The Naming" is actually one long chapter describing life and times in Michigan in 1933, where moments of doubt, pain and loss linger.
Several poems are pictures of the lives of important people; "Breakfasts with Joachim" and "Yenkl", and one entitled, "My Given Name", about his own naming. Deeply moving, this collection is a calm and wonderful excursion through lives and times.

[Paula Kirman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is poetic portraits from people in Levine's past. As I have found with most of what I have red of Levine's work, his poetry are almost like short stories, and almost like elegies.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't really get into this. But "Esquire" is brilliant.

[Robert Walkley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Philip Levine is an excellent poet. But I don’t this volume ranks among his best. The poems seemed a bit stale to me.

[Kari Schooley · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love deep poetry, you'll love this.

[Stan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lyrical prose

Reading these poems is like eavesdropping on the bits and parts of the author's life. An interesting and lyrical read.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

The mood here is elegiac -- Levine writes out past his 70th birthday. The great questions loom. The opening poem, "Gospel" sets the theme of treasuring each breath,of being aware
The pines make
a music like no other, riding and
falling like a distant surf at night
that calms the darkness before
first light. "Soughing" we call it, from
Old English, no less. How weightless
words are when nothing will do.

For most of the work the Eternal stays off stage. Levine longs for it

"that the breath battering
my ears and catching in my chest was more
than only my breath..."

More typically, in place of the Eternal are the reminisces, the thinking back to the Detroit he grew up in, the people,family and places once known, all now confined to memory and tidbits of tales. The long poem "Naming" touches on this flow of the past. For solace,there's music, particularly jazz.

He concludes this fine volume with this

Music. I'll call it music. It's what we need
as the sun staggers behind the the low gray clouds
blowing relentlessly in from that nameless ocean,
the calm and endless one I've still to cross.

[M- S__ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Levine has quickly become maybe my favorite living poet. This is my fourth or fifth collection of his this year, and that may have a lot to do with the low rating, but I just did not feel this book much at all. The poems weren't very well organized. I felt like I was jumping back and forth in time randomly. The subjects of Levine's poems are often working class Detroit folk, and I usually enjoy this character of his poetry, but many of those captured moments in these poems just felt kind of flat. I'm glad I read the book, but if you're not already a fan What Work Is is probably a better introduction to his work, and The Feed They Lion is a true masterpiece.

[Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

So my knowledge of poetry is even more limited than my knowledge of fiction, but I've been drawn to it more and more lately. Philip Levine is a big reason for that. I picked this book up while visiting a friend in NYC, and even though I've read it a couple of times, I still carry it around with me regularly. I connected with "Gospel" in such a visceral way that I could swear we walked the same path as he describes. Additionally, the urban landscapes he draws are so familiar, so vivid, that I feel like I'm looking at a photograph rather than reading words on a page. Love it, and need to get more.

[A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Philip Levine. He writes beautifully about ordinary people. In this collection he takes us back to the Detroit of his youth and the people who populated it. There are many elegaic poems. I always enjoy his humor and that is in great display in the poem "Our Reds." Levine also opines about the jazz music of the 50s. Any poem that honors Clifford Brown is a masterpiece as far as I'm concerned.

[Glenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to get to know our new poet laureate so I grabbed this book at random, and boy was I glad! I jumped around a bit, but loved the lyricism and voice. Will definitely dig a little deeper into Philip Levine.

[Arlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

my favorite poem is what work is and its not in here *sad face* but at least I got to meet him and he signed my book!

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

He is a wonderful poet but seems to be more interested in his real or imaginary past, ie from birth to 25 than anything else. Theme and variations but very well done.

[Patrick Mcgee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philip Levine is sublime. That is all!

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

More good than average poems in this book. Especially like "The Two."

[Mike Hammer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice work, a collection of mostly everyday routine actions and thoughts with great incisive observations, sharp lines that bit and made me smile.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Two" and "The Lesson" were my favorite poems from this collection.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite collection of Levine poetry but still a good read.