This week’s featured poet is Philip Levine. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Levine was born in Detroit in 1928. He began working in industrial factories at the age of 14. His working experiences led him to resolve to be a “voice for the voiceless”. He sought to make heroes of the ordinary folks who worked at hopeless jobs simply to stave off poverty.
He told Detroit Magazine, “In terms of the literature of the United States they weren’t being heard. Nobody was speaking for them.”
He attended Wayne State University while working and earned his BA in 1950. Then he started
taking writing workshops at the University of Iowa. He retired from the faculty of UC-Fresno in 1992. He served as US Poet Laureate in 2011-2012.
In 2011, I heard him read in Chicago along with Carol Ann Duffy, then Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. Two Poets Laureate for the price of one! A memorable evening. In the book signing line Levine and I were both wearing a Detroit Tigers team cap. And when I reached Duffy’s table, she looked at my “Recall Walker” button and said she was following our efforts, and wished Wisconsin rid of him. That didn’t happen soon enough.
Here’s a poem by Levine.
What Work Is
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.
From What Work Is (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)