Philip Levine – författare

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.From the Hardcover edition.

Philip Levine''s new collection of poems (his first since The Simple Truth was awarded the Pulitzer Prize) is a book of journeys: the necessary ones that each of us takes from innocence to experience, from youth to age, from confusion to clarity, from sanity to madness and back again, from life to death, and occasionally from defeat to triumph. The book''s mood is best captured in the closing lines of the title poem, which takes its name from the ship that brought the poet''s mother to America: A nine-year-old girl travels all night by train with one suitcase and an orange. She learns that mercy is something you can eat again and again while the juice spills over your chin, you can wipe it away with the back of your hands and you can never get enough.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1995   Written in a voice that moves between elegy and prayer, The Simple Truth contains thirty-three poems whose aim is to weave a complex tapestry of myth, history (both public and private), family, memory, and invention in a search for truths so basic and universal they often escape us all.From the Hardcover edition.

A superb new collection from “a great American poet . . . still at work on his almost-song of himself” (The New York Times Book Review).In both lively prose poems and more formal verse, Philip Levine brings us news from everywhere: from Detroit, where exhausted workers try to find a decent breakfast after the late shift, and Henry Ford, “supremely bored” in his mansion, clocks in at one of his plants . . . from Spain, where a woman sings a song that rises at dawn, like the dust of ages, through an open window . . . from Andorra, where an old Communist can now supply you with anything you want—a French radio, a Cadillac, or, if you have a week, an American film star.The world of his poetry is one of questionable magic: a typist lives for her only son who will die in a war to come; three boys fish in a river while a fine industrial residue falls on their shoulders. This is a haunted world in which exotic animals travel first class, an immigrant worker in Detroit yearns for the silence of his Siberian exile, and the Western mountains “maintain that huge silence we think of as divine.”A rich, deeply felt collection from one of our master poets.From the Hardcover edition.

LIGHTS I HAVE SEEN BEFORE The children are off somewhereand when I wakenI hear onlythe buzz of currentin the TVand the refrigerator groaning against the comingday. I rise and wash; there is nothingto think of exceptthe insistent pushof water, and the pipe''s

Winner of the National Book Award in 1991   “This collection amounts to a hymn of praise for all the workers of America. These proletarian heroes, with names like Lonnie, Loo, Sweet Pea, and Packy, work the furnaces, forges, slag heaps, assembly lines, and loading docks at places with unglamorous names like Brass Craft or Feinberg and Breslin’s First-Rate Plumbing and Plating. Only Studs Terkel’s Working approaches the pathos and beauty of this book. But Levine’s characters are also significant for their inner lives, not merely their jobs. They are unusually artistic, living ‘at the borders of dreams.’ One reads The Tempest ‘slowly to himself’; another ponders a diagonal chalk line drawn by his teacher to suggest a triangle, the roof of a barn, or the mysterious separation of ‘the dark from the dark.’ What Work Is ranks as a major work by a major poet . . . very accessible and utterly American in tone and language.” —Daniel L. Guillory, Library Journal

The inspiration for the title poem of Philip Levine’s A Walk with Tom Jefferson is not the founding father and third president of the United States that most readers would imagine upon hearing the name. Levine’s Tom Jefferson is quite different from his namesake: he is an African American living in a destitute area of industrial Detroit. But to Levine, he is “wise, compassionate, deliberate, honest…a great unknown American.” In A Walk with Tom Jefferson, Philip Levine reminds us why he is best known for his poems about working-class life in Detroit--and why so many people count a Levine poem among their favorites.

The final collection of new poems from one of our finest and most beloved poets. The poems in this wonderful collection touch all of the events and places that meant the most to Philip Levine. There are lyrical poems about his family and childhood, the magic of nighttime and the power of dreaming; tough poems about the heavy shift work at Detroit''s auto plants, the Nazis, and bosses of all kinds; telling poems about his heroes--jazz players, artists, and working people of every description, even children. Other poems celebrate places and things he loved: the gifts of winter, dawn, a wall in Naples, an English hilltop, Andalusia. And he makes peace with Detroit: "Slow learner that I am, it took me one night/to discover that rain in New York City/is just like rain in Detroit. It gets you wet." It is a peace that comes to full fruition in a moving goodbye to his home town in the final poem in the collection, "The Last Shift."From the Hardcover edition.

Essays, speeches, and journal entries from one of our most admired and best-loved poets that illuminate how he came to understand himself as a poet, the events and people that he wrote about, and the older poets who influenced him. In prose both as superbly rendered as his poetry and as down-to-earth and easy as speaking, Levine reveals the things that made him the poet he became. In the title essay, originally the final speech of his poet laureate year, he recounts how as a boy he composed little speeches walking in the night woods near his house and how he later realized these were his first poems. He wittily takes on the poets he studied with in the Iowa Writing Program: John Berryman, who was his great teacher and lifelong friend, and Robert Lowell, who was neither. His deepest influences--jazz, Spain, the working people of Detroit--are reflected in many of the pieces. There are essays on Spanish poets he admires, William Carlos Williams, Wordsworth, Keats, and others. A wonderful, moving collection of writings that add to our knowledge and appreciation of Philip Levine--both the man and the poet.From the Hardcover edition.

Interviews with the poet Philip Levine on the subject of his poetry

Dive into the rich world of classical scholarship with California Studies in Classical Antiquity: Volume 10, a compelling collection of essays that explore diverse aspects of ancient history, literature, and culture. This volume brings together the work of leading scholars, offering fresh perspectives and in-depth analyses on topics ranging from ancient Greek military strategy to Roman mythology. Highlights include Evelyn Elizabeth Bell''s examination of two Krokotos mask cups at San Simeon, Mark W. Edwards'' insightful analysis of Agamemnon''s fateful decision in Aeschylus, and Patricia A. Johnston''s exploration of Vergil''s conception of Saturnus. Readers will also find fascinating studies on the Athenian Empire, the topography of the Battle of Amphipolis, and unmetrical spellings in Attic inscriptions. With contributions that span both the Greek and Roman worlds, this volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the complexities and nuances of classical antiquity. This title was originally published in 1978. Dive into the rich world of classical scholarship with California Studies in Classical Antiquity: Volume 10, a compelling collection of essays that explore diverse aspects of ancient history, literature, and culture. This volume brings together the work o

California Studies in Classical Antiquity: Volume 6 presents an insightful collection of essays, offering readers a deep dive into various facets of classical history, literature, and culture. From ancient Greek philosophy to Roman political influence, this volume brings together scholarly research that sheds new light on pivotal moments and ideas from the classical world. Notable contributions include Mortimer Chambers'' analysis of Aristotle''s take on Solon''s reform of coinage and weights, Frederick M. Combellack''s exploration of three enduring problems in the Odyssey, and Roger A. De Laix''s examination of the silver coinage of the Aetolian League. Erich S. Gruen questions the supposed alliance between Rome and Philip V of Macedon, while Phillip Harding delves into the political purpose behind Isokrates'' Archidamos and On the Peace. With discussions ranging from Propertius'' patriotic emotions to the Roman influences on the victory reliefs of Shapur I of Persia, this volume offers a rich, interdisciplinary approach to classical antiquity. This title was originally published in 1974. California Studies in Classical Antiquity: Volume 6 presents an insightful collection of essays, offering readers a deep dive into various facets of classical history, literature, and culture. From ancient Greek philosophy to Roman political influence, th

A compelling second collection of poetry.

The overarching theme of "Discourse and Technology" is cutting-edge in the field of linguistics: multimodal discourse. This volume opens up a discussion among discourse analysts and others in linguistics and related fields about the two-fold impact of new communication technologies: The impact on how discourse data is collected, transcribed, and analyzed - and the impact that these technologies are having on social interaction and discourse. As inexpensive tape recorders allowed the field to move beyond text, written or printed language, to capture talk - discourse as spoken language - the information explosion (including cell phones, video recorders, Internet chat rooms, online journals, and the like) has moved those in the field to recognize that all discourse is, in various ways, "multimodal," constructed through speech and gesture, as well as through typography, layout, and the materials employed in the making of texts. The contributors have responded to the expanding scope of discourse analysis by asking five key questions: Why should we study discourse and technology and multimodal discourse analysis? What is the role of the World Wide Web in discourse analysis?How does one analyze multimodal discourse in studies of social actions and interactions? How does one analyze multimodal discourse in educational social interactions? And how does one use multimodal discourse analyses in the workplace? The vitality of these explorations opens windows onto even newer horizons of discourse and discourse analysis.