Philip Levine

Philip Levine in 2006. Photo by David Shankbone. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Philip Levine
Born	January 10, 1928 (1928-01-10) Detroit, Michigan

Philip Levine (January 10, 1928 - February 14, 2015) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet and academic, who served as Poet laureate of the United States.

Life

Levine grew up in industrial Detroit, Michigan, the middle of 3 sons and the oldest 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 Philip was 5 years old, his father died. While growing up, he faced the anti-Semitism embodied by Father Coughlin, the pro-Nazi radio priest.

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. At Wayne he began to write poetry, encouraged by his mother (to whom he later dedicated a book of poems, The Mercy. Levine earned an A.B. in 1950 and went to work for Chevrolet and Cadillac in what he called "stupid jobs."

He married Patty Kanterman in 1951. Their marriage lasted until 1953.

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 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, Fresno, where he taught until his retirement in 1992. He was the Distinguished Poet in Residence for the Creative Writing Program at New York University. He also taught at many other universities, among them Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Tufts, Vanderbilt, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Levine and his wife made their homes in Fresno and Brooklyn.

In 1968, Levine signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

On November 29, 2007, a tribute was held in New York City in anticipation of Levine's 80th birthday. Among those celebrating Levine's career by reading his work were Yusef Komunyakaa, Galway Kinnell, E.L. Doctorow, Charles Wright, Jean Valentine, and Sharon Olds. Levine himself read several new and interesting poems. He thanked his students and asked them to refrain from asking for any more letters of recommendation.

Near the end of his life, Levine, an avid jazz aficionado, collaborated with jazz saxophonist and composer Benjamin Boone on the melding of his poetry and narration with music. The resulting CD, “The Poetry of Jazz” (Origin Records 82754), was released posthumously on March 16, 2018. It contains 14 of Levine's poems and performances by Levine and Boone as well as jazz greats Chris Potter, Greg Osby, and Tom Harrell .

He died of pancreatic cancer on February 14, 2015, age 87.

Writing

The familial, social, and economic world of 20th-century industrial Detroit is one of the major subjects of his life'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-20th century American life.

Levine's working experience lent his poetry a profound skepticism in regard to conventional American ideals. In his earliest books, On the Edge (1963) and Not This Pig (1968), the poetry dwells on those who suddenly become aware they are trapped in some murderous processes not of their own making. Other collections include the National Book Award-winning What Work Is, A Walk with Tom Jefferson, and his New Selected Poems.

In his earliest 2 books, Levine was somewhat traditional in form and relatively constrained in expression. Beginning with They Feed They Lion, Levine's poems are typically free-verse monologues tending toward trimeter or tetrameter. The music of Levine's poetry depends on tension between his line-breaks and his syntax. The title poem of Levine's book 1933 (1974) is an example of the cascade of clauses and phrases one finds in his poetry.

Recognition

Levine was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2011–2012.

Awards

• 2013 Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award
• 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry - The Simple Truth"
• 1991 National Book Award - What Work Is
• 1979 National Book Critics Circle Award Ashes: Poems New and Old
• 1979 American Book Award for Poetry - Ashes: Poems New and Old
• 1979 National Book Critics Circle Award - 7 Years from Somewhere
• 1975 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize "The Names of the Lost"
• 1987 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
• Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize from Poetry
• Frank O'Hara Prize
• Two Guggenheim Foundation fellowships

Publications

Poetry

• On the Edge (limited edition). Iowa City, IA: Stone Wall Press, 1961; second edition, 1963.
• Silent in America: Vivas for those Who failed (limited edition). Iowa City, IA: Shaw Avenue Press, 1965.
• Not This Pig. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1968.
• 5 Detroits. Santa Barbara, CA: Unicorn Press, 1970.
• Thistles: A poem sequence (limited edition). London: Turret Books, 1970.
• Pili's Wall. Santa Barbara, CA: Unicorn Press, 1971; second edition, 1980.
• Red Dust (illustrated by Marcia Mann). Santa Cruz, CA: Kayak, 1971.
• They Feed They Lion. New York: Atheneum, 1972; New York: Knopf, 1999.
• 1933. New York: Atheneum, 1974.
• New Season (pamphlet). St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1975.
• On the Edge and Over: Poems old, lost, and new. Oakland, CA: Cloud Marauder, 1976.
• The Names of the Lost (limited edition). Iowa City, IA: Windhover Press, 1976; New York: Atheneum, 1976.
• 7 Years from Somewhere. New York: Atheneum, 1979.
• Ashes: Poems new and old. New York: Atheneum, 1979.
• One for the Rose. New York: Atheneum, 1981.
• Selected Poems. New York: Atheneum, 1984.
• Sweet Will. New York: Atheneum, 1985.
• A Walk with Tom Jefferson. New York: Knopf, 1988.
• New Selected Poems. New York: Knopf, 1991.
• What Work Is. New York: Knopf, 1991.
• The Simple Truth. New York: Knopf, 1994.
• Unselected Poems. Santa Cruz, CA: Greenhouse Review Press, 1997.
• The Mercy. New York: Knopf, 1999.
• Breath: Poems. New York: Knopf, 2004.
• News of the World. New York: Knopf, 2009.

Non-fiction

• Don't Ask (interviews). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1981.
• Earth, Stars, and Writers (lectures; With Orlando Patterson & Norman Rush). Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1992.
• The Bread of Time: Toward an autobiography. New York: Knopf, 1994.
• So Ask: Essays, conversations, and interviews. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002.

Translated

• Jaime Sabines, Tarumba: The selected poems (editor, & translator with Ernesto Trejo) . San Francisco, CA: Twin Peaks Press, 1979.
• Gloria Fuertes, Off the Map: Selected poems (edited with Ada Long, & translated). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1984.

Edited

• Character and Crisis: A Contemporary Reader (edited with Henri Coulette). New York: McGraw, 1966.
• The Pushcart Prize XI (edited with D. Wojahn & B. Henderson). Wainscott, NY: Pushcart, 1986.
• John Keats, The Essential Keats (selected, & author of introduction). New York: Ecco Press, 1987.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

Audio / video

Philip Levine Gives Inaugural Reading as U.S. Poet Laureate

Sound recordings include Philip Levine Reading His Poems with Comment, 1960, 1975; Bicentennial Poetry Discussion, 1976; The Poetry and Voice of Philip Levine, Caedmon, 1976; Hear Me, Watershed Tapes; Philip Levine, 1986; and Mark Turpin and Philip Levine Reading Their Poems in the Mumford Room, 1997.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• "Breakfasts with Joachim" by Philip Levine, published in Blackbird, an online journal of literature and the arts
• "Philip Levine" profile & 10 poems at the Academy of American Poets
• Philip Levine b. 1928 at the Poetry Foundation
• Philip Levine at PoemHunter (105 poems)

Audio/video

• Video: Philip Levine walks and talks with us about poetry in Brooklyn, NY - The Cortland Review Winter 2009 Feature
• Audio: Three poems read by Philip Levine: "Distant February", "The Privelege of Power, 1965", "Assembly" - The Cortland Review
• Audio: Philip Levine: Poems in the Internet Poetry Archive (9 poems text & audio)
• Philip Levine at YouTube
• Philip Levine reading on September 23, 2004: Blackbird: An Online Journal of Literature and the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Volume 3, No. 2 (Fall 2004)

About

• Philip Levine in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Philip Levine at NNDB.
• Philip Levine (1928- ) at Modern American Poetry.
• Biography of Philip Levine - looking in detail at his politics and his anarchism
• Mona Simpson (Summer 1988). "Philip Levine, The Art of Poetry No. 39". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2512/the-art-of-poetry-no-39-philip-levine. 
• Review of Levine's News of the World