Philip Levine (1928-2015) won the National Book Award in 1991 with What Work Is; in 1995, the Pulitzer with The Simple Truth. His final poetry collection, The Last Shift (Alfred A. Knopf), as well as a collection of essays and other writings, My Lost Poets: A Life in Poetry (Alfred A. Knopf), were published posthumously in 2016. Levine was the poet laureate of the United States from 2011-2012.
Poetry
Autumn 2004
My Father in the Wind
Even in the dark the wind blows. I hear it in the high branches of the great cedar humming its one tune. In the small room that is mine the […]
Poetry
Autumn 2004
The Death of Mayakovsky
Philadelphia, the historic downtown, April 14, 1930. My father sits down at the little desk in his hotel room overlooking an airshaft to begin a letter home: “Dear Essie,” he […]
Poetry
Autumn 2004
Morning in Liguria
Rain seven days without letup. Another dawn, if you can call the gray light of a low sky dawn. The two ancient setters, their ears flattened, moan at the back […]
Poetry
Spring 1999
If You Are Here
Two women walk side by side at dawnalong the canal bank. July, ’96.The sun has cleared the eastern mountains.The tall woman’s your sister, the other your second wife. They have […]
Poetry
Spring 1999
The Three Crows
At dawn my great aunt Tsipie would rise and goto the east windows of the apartment,face the weak October sun and curse God.A deeply spiritual woman, she could rollstrudel dough […]
Poetry
Spring 1999
And That Night Clifford Died
We broke for lunch at 8 P.M.,in my case two sandwichesof fresh lettuce and Genoasalami cut so thin the lightshone through the slices when Faso,the Sicilian butcher, heldthem up to […]
Poetry
Spring 1999
They Feed They Lion
Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread, Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar, Out of creosote, gasoline, […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1999
Staying Power: A Lifetime in Poetry: An Interview with Philip Levine
(The interview took place at 3 P.M. on Thursday, March 20, in Philip Levine’s Greenwich Village apartment. Levine is a tall, slender, wiry man with curly hair and dark eyes […]
Poetry
Spring 1999
What Work Is
We stand in the rain in a long linewaiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.You know what work is—if you’reold enough to read this you know whatwork is, although you […]
Nonfiction
Autumn 1989
Part of the Problem
Recently I was invited to participate in a lecture series at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington dealing with the topic “Socializing the Private Vision.” The title comes from a […]
Poetry
Autumn 1989
Innocence
Side by side against the trunks of the gray oaksthat lined US 24 we sat while Michelangelo concoctedfrom tomatoes, hot peppers, onions, salami,his long blade flashing along the blocks of […]
Poetry
Autumn 1989
Agnus Dei
My little sister created the Lamb of God. She made him out of used-up dust mops and coat hangers. She left him whitewashed at the entrance to the Calvin Coolidge […]
Poetry
Winter 1981
The Camel: The Chevy of the Magi
Translated from Spanish. On the road the camel was wounded by a thistle and the mechanic Melchior gave him some wine. Balthazar stopped to piss way the hell out […]