Philip Levine (January 10, 1928 – February 14, 2015) was an American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for more than thirty years in the English department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well. He served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2000 to 2006,

Biography

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 (Pryszkulnik) Levine, was a bookseller.

In high school, a teacher told him, "You write like an angel. Why don't you think about becoming a writer?" At this point, he was already working at night in auto factories, though he was just 14 years old. Detroit Central High School graduated him in 1946, and he 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 dedicated the book of poems The Mercy. Levine earned his A.B. in 1950 and went to work for Chevrolet and Cadillac in what he called "stupid jobs."

In 1953, he attended the University of Iowa without registering, studying with, among others, poets Robert Lowell and John Berryman, the latter of whom Levine called his "one great mentor."

In 1954, he earned a mail-order master's degree with a thesis on John Keats' "Ode to Indolence," and married actress Frances J. Artley.

Levine and his wife had made their homes in Fresno and Brooklyn Heights. He died of pancreatic cancer on February 14, 2015, at age 87.

Work

The familial, social, and economic world of twentieth-century Detroit is one of the major subjects of Levine's work. His portraits of working-class Americans and his continuous examination of his Jewish immigrant inheritance (both based on real life and described through fictional characters) has left a testimony of mid-twentieth century American life. In 1968, Levine signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse to make tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

In his first two books, Levine was somewhat traditional in form and relatively constrained in expression. Among those celebrating Levine's career by reading Levine's work were Yusef Komunyakaa, Galway Kinnell, E. L. Doctorow, Charles Wright, Jean Valentine and Sharon Olds.

Awards

  • 1973 – American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, Frank O'Hara Prize, Guggenheim Foundation fellowship – Ashes: Poems New and Old and Los Angeles Times Book Prize – What Work Is
  • 1995 – Pulitzer Prize for Poetry – The Simple Truth (1994)

Bibliography

Poetry

;Collection

  • On the Edge (1963), The Stone Wall Press. Limited to 220 numbered hardback copies.
  • On the Edge (1964), The Second Press. First trade softcover edition.
  • Not This Pig, Wesleyan University Press, 1968, ; Wesleyan University Press, 1982,
  • Pili's Wall, Unicorn Press, 1971; Unicorn Press, 1980
  • Red Dust (1971)
  • They Feed They Lion, Atheneum, 1972
  • 1933, Atheneum, 1974,
  • On the Edge & Over: Poems, Old, Lost & New (1976), Cloud Marauder Press, ASIN: B0006D0JTI. Contains 16 of the 21 poems from Levine's 1963 debut volume, On the Edge, plus a second section made up of seven “lost” poems, and a third consisting of five new poems.
  • The Names of the Lost, Atheneum, 1976
  • Ashes: Poems New and Old, Atheneum, 1979,
  • 7 Years From Somewhere, Atheneum, 1979,
  • One for the Rose, Atheneum, 1981,
  • Selected Poems, Atheneum, 1984, . Included by critic Harold Bloom in his list of works constituting the Western Canon.
  • Sweet Will, Atheneum, 1985,
  • A Walk With Tom Jefferson, A.A. Knopf, 1988,
  • New Selected Poems, Knopf, 1991,
  • What Work Is, Knopf, 1992,
  • The Simple Truth, Alfred A. Knopf, 1994, ; Alfred A. Knopf, 1996,
  • Unselected Poems, Greenhouse Review Press, 1997,
  • The Mercy, Random House, Inc., 1999,
  • Breath Knopf, 2004, ; reprint, Random House, Inc., 2006,
  • Stranger to Nothing: Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2006,
  • News of the World, Random House, Inc., 2009,
  • The Last Shift (2016), Edward Hirsch (Ed.), Knopf, .

;Translations

  • Off the Map: Selected Poems of Gloria Fuertes, edited and translated with Ada Long (1984)
  • Tarumba: The Selected Poems of Jaime Sabines, edited and translated with Ernesto Trejo (1979)

Essays

  • The Bread of Time (1994)
  • So Ask: Essays, Conversations, and Interviews (2002), University of Michigan Press
  • My Lost Poets: A Life in Poetry (2016), Knopf, .

Recorded interviews

  • "Interlochen Center for the Arts", Interview with Interlochen Arts Academy students on March 17, 1977.
  • Moyers & Company, on December 29, 2013, Philip Levine reads some of his poetry and explores how his years working on Detroit's assembly lines inspired his poetry.

References

  • 2012 Levine interview at Words on a Wire
  • Phillip Levine on America's Workers, Moyers & Company, December 27, 2013
  • Correspondence with Gerald Stern