Philip Levine Books

This book of narrative poetry is divided into four sections. Most notable in this collection is Levine's presupposing his readers. In the first poem, the speaker asks, "Can you imagine the air filled with-smoke?/ It was." The first ten lines of Salt and Oil really sum-up how Levine skillfully envisions his audience. In this piece, three men are introduced, the narrator calls one Salt and the other Oil. Levine withholds naming the third man and writes: "'The third man,' you ask, `who was the third man in the photograph?' There is no/ photograph, no mystery./ Only Salt and Oil..." He uses this device in many other poems, and uses it very effectively. Again, in Cesare, Levine manipulates the reader by painting a portrait of this friend, Cesare and then Levine shocks the reader with, "of course I never knew any Cesare..." And in case the reader skimmed over that, he rephrases it in the next line, "he died before I left Detroit, before/ I had a chance..." And if the reader is still confused/incredulous, Levine says it once more, "I'm really talking/ about someone else I can't name..." Strangely enough, as the reader, I wasn't off-put by this - Levine had such a gentle, trustworthy voice that I was willing to follow. How interesting: his persuasiveness and my willingness!

Levine's an alert man who listens, waits, and writes-of it. These pieces have vivid, concrete language but, unfortunately, with little imagery. In the poem The Sea We Read About, the reader finds the metaphysical, symbolic, and allegorical. I was carried by lines like, "...the sea spread out, limitless and changing/ everything, and that I would get there some day." Oh, that elusive "there," that long-away "some day." In poems like these, Levine speaks to the collective psyche.

Levine has some lovely moments and surprising, poetic diction, like this from Caught a Glimpse: "The moment is so full/ I have to close my eyes..." And from the poem, Night Words, "...snow gathers/ on their shoulders and scalds their ungloved hands." He touches on an intriguing concept here: let's dream today of our literal future as if we're self-soothsayers while we dream. Also in The Dead there's a particularly wonderful image: "he scurried off, the oranges/ tumbling out of the dark sack, one/ after another, a short bright trail/ left on the sidewalk..." Another beautiful moment can be found in the last two stanzas of The Evening, this idea of "...leafing through the great book of days." I won't call Levine a man of great poetics, but I will refer to him as a man with poetics of great meaning.

However, I have two qualms with this book. In many of Levine's poems, he tends to end with the expository; a lot of these stanzas just feel like summations and don't necessarily push the theme (e.g. The Unknowable, Philosophy Lesson, The Mercy). Secondly, Levine has a consistent form he uses throughout: a single stanza, longish line poem which usually runs a full page. This form was fine for most of the pieces. But what about the poems which beg a shorter line and shorter length? For example, He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do seems to contradict itself in its context, as compared to its form. Form usually follows function for maximum impact (unless, of course, there's tension in the way form is used in a contrary fashion). Specifically, this poem expands on the uselessness of over-talk; it's a poem about silence but without much silence itself. I would expect a poem on wordiness to be less wordy. One thing that Levine does do right in this poem is introducing this lovely, curious metaphor: "Fact is silence is the perfect water..."

[These comments appeared in a February 24, 2000 article in the Seattle Weekly that is available in full online at http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0008/books-lightfoot.shtml]

Philip Levine, born in 1928 to a poor family in an immigrant neighborhood of Detroit, is the author of 17 books of poetry and the winner of a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. He spent most of his twenties in brutalizing industrial jobs, and after he escaped into a different life as a writer, the world he left behind became his central subject. Levine has devoted his art to rendering justly the blunt, weary dramas that unfold in blue-collar neighborhoods and factories, in poems that are works of praise as well as pathos. Like his award-winning "What Work Is," his new collection, "The Mercy," presents recollected characters such as an immigrant peddler, a thick-armed farmer, a butcher, a man so happy to be changing a flat tire with his father that he sings--all palpably alive in the capacious honesty of the poet's vision. May Levine's blunt songs of the single grit-blown moment--that woman digging bulbs into bare ground, this man-handled oildrum under exactly this sky--be heard and remembered through our shiny times.

Philip Levine was born in Detroit to immigrant Jewish parents. The adjustment his family made to a new land, together with the poverty of the Depression, has made a deep imprint on his writing. He worked at a succession of blue-collar jobs before becoming a professor in Fresno, California. He has received both the National Book award and the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry.

In the poems of The Mercy, the poet looks back upon incidents in his life or in the lives of those dear to him. The title poem describes his mother's journey to the New World on a ship both aptly and ironically named "The Mercy". The poet looks back at her voyage, including his own research on it, to recapture the shock of the voyage to a then nine year old girl with no English attempting to find her way in a strange land. A related poem earlier in the volume describing an immigrant's reaction to the New World is "Reinventing America." (Perhaps an ironic reference to the reinvention of government theme of the late 1990's)

I think the poems are designed to capture, for the poet and the reader, the details of the small moments of life, remembered and recreated. In "Salt and Oil", one of the fine poems of the collection, Levine describes a process that underlies the theme of memory in the book:

"Three young men in dirty work clothes/ on their way home or to a bar/ in the late morning. This is not/ a photograph, it is a moment/ in the daily life of the world,/ a moment that will pass into the unwritten biography/ of your city or my city/ unless it is frozen in the fine print/ of your eyes."

So Levine etches these moments for us in his poems.

There are poems describing the loss of innocence (as in "Flowering Midnight" which mourns "the lost white world we thought was ours for good.") and poems describing the dissipation, in loneliness even of the lure of sexuality (as in the poem "The Cafe" which describes a bar scene and concludes "the air thickens with smoke, and no one cares/if the two young girls show their thights or their breasts, some nights/the young men along the bar are too tired even to die.")

Levine is no stranger to the power of music. I found his tribute to Sonny Rollins in "The Unknowable", particularly moving. ("He is merely a man--/after all--a man who stared for years/into the breathy, unknowable voice/of silence and captured the music.")

The poems are in a restrained free verse, in the manner of a chastened and somber Walt Whitman. The poetry also reminds me of the earlier Jewish-American poet, Charles Reznikoff, in its telling vignettes of the lives of ordinary people, its emphasis of a moment, in it use of understatement, and in its reluctance to moralize.

Memory can bring sadness, wisdom, reflection, but it can also result in hope. There is no easy optimism in this collection. This collection is etched sharply with individual recollections of a life. It may help the reader share in the process of looking back with understanding, love, and forbearance.

This was my first book by Philip Levine and I must say I was impressed. His poetry is strong, descriptive and makes many statements in innovative ways, this is almost fiction. As a newcommer to his style and skills I can only recommend this book as a good introduction to Levine.

Recently I had the pleasure to attend a Philip Levine reading in New York City. Like most of our lauded poets, he drowned the audience in a forcible modesty, at one point saying that he is only thought of as a worker's poet, but he's "really not." Well, whether that is just another artist's malevolence towards critics of the day or honest sentiment, The Mercy seems to back him up.

Unlike past masterpieces such as "Names of the Lost" or "What Work Is," The Mercy indulges in an extra dollop of jazz poems, such as the eulogy to the great Sonny Rollins, feeding his horn with breath on Manhattan's Williamsburg Bridge, breath that "became the music of the world," as Levine puts it in one of The Mercy's best poems, "The Unknowing." Of course, this collection offers Levine's typically brilliant working poems, such as the first poem, "Smoke." "Why/ was the air filled with smoke?" Levine writes, "Simple. We had work/Work was something that thrived on fire, that without/ fire couldn't catch its breath or hang on for life."

But there is yet a third dimension to Levine that surfaces here, an element of playfulness, of constructing the poems as conversations between speaker and reader, such as on the just-mentioned poem, in which he speaks of smoke in the first stanza and drifts off onto something of a tangent, and as if his ear were not just tuned to the cadence of his own poem but also to the reader's mind, he writes, "Go back to the beginning, you insist." And he does. Other times, it is as if Levine were writing about writing, almost mocking his chosen art, as on poems such as "Clouds Above the Sea," a poem about his parents standing side by side, "I could give her a rope of genuine pearls/as a gift for bearing my father's sons/ and let each pearl glow with a child's fire/ I could turn her toward you now with a smile/ so that we might joy in her constancy."

This sort of teasing propells these poems to the heights of tragicomedy, as most poems are deeply rooted in the heavy world of tragic characters that pervade most of Levine's work. Only this time, any element of mawkishness has evaporated, and we get a curious blend of laughs and sighs leaping from each page. Perhaps this is The mercy's most impressive facet; that now in his early seventies and after forty years worth of books, Philip Levine's poetry continues to evolve.

This book of poetry, as well as others by Dorianne Laux contains powerful images and ideas expressed in compelling images. The themes are true and captivating. Laux's life experiences seep into many of these great poems.

This book of poetry is absolutely amazing. Ms. Laux writes about the realities that everyone thinks about, but doesn't talk about. Unlike many modern poets, she has something to say. Too many poets nowadays write poems without ever saying anything. Not Dorianne Laux.

If Emily Dickinson were to read Laux's poems, she would know she was in the presence of poetry. These poems resonate with emotional content and sound. If you like Sharon Olds, you'll adore Dorianne Laux.

This is a wonderful book for readers of Philip Levine, who will find him here grappling with twilight themes and his own relationship to the legacy of romantic poetry, alongside more poems about working-class Americans which he is famous for. "Call It Music" and "Our Reds" are Levine at his best, and "Call It Music" is a good entry point also for those new to his work. Nevertheless, if you have not read Levine before, start with his book: "What Work Is" or "A Walk With Tom Jefferson," then maybe proceed to sip and appreciate "Breath" even more.

I have admired Mr. Levine's work for years, have been to numerous readings. Perhaps only Wright and Dickey match his ability to turn the lyrical moment from the straight-ahead narrative. But I must be honest and write that he has, especially since "The Simple Truth," been turning the same styllistic moves and strategies over and over, to the point that his poetry has become a character sketch of the poet rather than the poet's illumination of his world. How many poems, for instance, must begin or be moved by adverb phrases? How many poems about the same subject matter? (Sharon Olds fell victim to the repetative theme about 10 years ago)

Philip Levine does not have the recognition he deserves as the foremost poet in America writing in English. True, he has plenty of fine critics who praise him as they should, but his work somehow should be on everyone's lips more than it is. Breath has him still doing it like no one else. He elevates and makes elegiac the life of the working person - the life of maybe not everyone, but you and I.

I need to tell you about my relationship with Levine's poems. When I first read Levine's "Burned" (later to appear in What Work Is), it gave me a nightmare about my father that both terrified me and made me love my Father like I never had before. In fact, I made it back to Baltimore in time to plant a kiss on his dieing forehead, and I often think about that poem when I think about that moment.
It is true that I arranged Bukowski's second public reading ever and had it video-taped (as reported in the Chicago newspaper review of the video recording, Bukowski at Bellevue). Appearing in Hank's short story made his work play a part in my life, but nothing like Levine's work. His new book has poems that have the same kinds of power. They are about naming when naming is, in the words of the poems, "not enough". Philip Levine's words will always be with us. You do not have to go as far as I do and snap up a new book by him without even looking inside. However, you owe it to you or your soul to read Breath.

Carl Waluconis

Morling's poems are are fresh and deceptively simple, and alive. There are definite overtones of Eastern philosophy and religion here, as in the superb "Standing on the Earth Among the Cows." Ocean Avenue is full of careful observation, celebration of the everyday. A great new voice and a generous new heart in American poetry.

In OCEAN AVENUE, Malena Mörling captivates us with an eyeful of American urbanity-crowds, traffic, pigeons. But the cumulative effect is not "the color of pavement" (20). Mörling's muscle as an observer lies in her selection of detail, as well as her imaginative empathy. She's drawn to the human experience; one may be reminded of Whitman's Civil War poems. Mörling is well aware of life's harsh realities-violence, poverty, loneliness, private suffering-as seen in poems "Among Pillars of Dust" and "For Bartleby." And because Mörling is conscious of her own mortality ("First Thought," "Visiting," "Three Daffodils," "Let Me Say This"), she expresses a greater sense of immediacy by rightly speaking in the present tense. No wonder she chants her own version of carpe deum: "Walk more slowly now" (20). But what I admire most is the way Mörling treads "between two contraries," as Robert Hass might say, by letting the world speak through her, while also claiming certain universals-which simply means: "...we still ask the questions: / `Where do we come from? / Who are we? / Where are we going?'" (59).

A beautiful book dealing lightly with dark subjects, filled with fresh modifiers, weighty conclusions, and perceptions as intense as a child's. Morling holds onto things that have passed through most of us, weighs them, and puts them on shelves so we can look at them again. Great stuff!

If we, the reader, are skeptics and believers of the possibility of art, if we imagine that there is another space language occupies outside of that small room that is our lives, if we are willing to accept ironies and unwillingly acknowledge the tragedy that has always been the recurring theme of the individual, then this book is the past, the present, and future of our desire to live. It's hard to comprehend that there can be anything so miserable as a wish to live forever or anything so beautiful as two old horses named Anastasia and Sandman, but Larry Levis is one of the greatest poets in the American language and culture because of his ability to texture language and improvise narratives so fluid that the reader understand and arrives at that place where all words and all stories begin and end. That place being the middle or the ever-present present that exists when a word is spoken or read and the mind attempts to find the object, the meaning, or the example for what that word represents. Or that ever-present that becomes the present as the story teller remakes the story so that it is again something real and intangible and we experience it because it is there and we do not experience it because it is not there. I don't know how else to explain the book and each poem that invites the reader to examine mortality without the immediate allusion to death but the difficult exercise of life and the ironies it weaves around us. It is impossible to read this book and not feel completely desperate, lost, and in want of every moment of passion we've ever owned and lost to circumstance, fear, the idea of being embarressed in front of our peers. Even the depraved moments we've had in our lives seem worthwhile in the language, story, and voice of this book that is so much of heart of its author that it remains a ghost behind its words. And if you've ever wanted to be bridge your life as an adult to your lost childhood, if you've ever wanted to be invisible, or drive as fast as your car could go, or found yourself talking to a horse, a tree, an empty page that replies without sympathy, without comfort, and even mocks you in its silent and indifferent manners, then this book might remind you of how it felt to have so many desires with nothing but your hands to carry them with.

When Larry Levis, author of The Wrecking Crew and The Widening Spell of Leaves, died unexpectedly in May of 1996, he left behind Elegy, a collecion of twenty poems. Readers will recognize the style of Levis. His poems are labyrinthine and digressive in a way that many readers might find off-putting, but his associative peregrinations do little to detract from the overall power of his work. Readers will find the same themes they have come to expect from Levis: death, ecstasy, and human indifference. Reading Levis' work is like witnessing a car accident--a particularly bad one--your own.

While I can certainly recommend this book for children (it is a great story, and the pictures are quite beautiful), it is of limited interest for the Philip Pullman junkie. The story is retold well, but you'd never know Pullman wrote it, as opposed to anyone else.

This book is excellently written and illustrated, but I was really surprised to read the first sentence, "Once upon a time in China ..." The story and illustrations indicate the settings in the Middle East and the currency used for all transactions in the story is the "dinar" !!!!

If you're looking for a non-Disney version of this classic tale, this is a nice re-telling of the Aladdin story, with captivating illustrations for kids ages 6-10.

The previous reviewer wrote that this version of the classic Aladdin tale was in error - that it mistakenly took place in China, not the Middle East as it should be. The truth is that this story has ALWAYS taken place in China, from the earliest existing versions of the story from the 16th century. Disney got it wrong, no surprise. Although these stories originated in the Middle East, they were often fantasies about far away and fabulous places, such as China. (It may also interest people to know that the earliest versions of many of these stories are in French, not Arabic, and many scholars believe that the versions which we know were created by Europeans out of bits and fragments of local Arabic and Persian sources, emphasizing the "oriental" exoticism which Europeans saw therein. In other words, there is no existing "authentic" Middle Eastern version.)

For grown ups, I recommend the highly readable two volumes of Arabian Nights tales translated into English by Husain Haddawy. It's the definitive version, IMHO. Avoid Sir Richard Burton's translation like the plague. Enough said.

For kids ages 7-11, I also strongly recommend Brian Alderson's colorfully illistrated retelling of the Arabian Nights (ISBN 0-688-14219-2). Another excellent illustrated version is The Arabian Nights retold by Neil Philip (ISBN 0-531-06868-4), which has fewer but funkier illustrations. Both story collections contain over a dozen tales, sutable for reading over many days, including the stories of Aladdin and Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves. Alderson's version also has the Story of Sinbad, and is the children's version which comes closest to mirroring the full extent of the original tales.

For slightly older kids (ages 9-14) I would recommend Geraldine McCaughrean's version of the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (ISBN 0-19-274500), which has the best version of the stories-within-story framework.

If Middle Eastern exoticism is your interest, another good picture book for kids ages 5-7 is Tomie DePaola's Legend of the Persian Carpet (ISBN 0-399-22415-7).

Philistine that I am, I am not surprised to find myself out of my league when reading great poets; so when the first few chapters of this book of prose seemed incomprehensible I began to feel, once again, in over my head. I continued to read, however, and slowly I was able to make sense of what I was reading as the abstract language of a sick artist fell away to reveal a concrete human plight. Ironically neither this book nor John's recovery reached a conclusion, the book was published unedited by the author, posthumously - unfortunately John ended his life and his struggle with alcohol shortly after the events that inspired the book took place. I was horrified by the few lucid descriptions of what life is like in a treatment center, an asylum run by the inmates (former inmates), where the cure was browbeating and humiliating confrontation. Having struggled with alcohol myself, I am grateful that I never checked into one of these indoctrination camps. But then again I am an unqualified critic in denial!

John Berryman was working on "Recovery" when he died, and in these pages there is hope of some ultimate victory over addiction. In the character of Alan Severance is the thinly-veiled personality of the poet himself, self-deprecating and perfectionist, attempting to overcome despair in a hospitalized addict's routine of recognition and confrontation. It is by no means an uplifting triumph to acknowledge that he got this far in the struggle -- but that he got this far, and then despaired, says much about the power of alcohol to ruin even the power of hope. This novel will change any romantic notions the reader may have about art and the role of drugs in the life of any artist.

"Multicultural Law Enforcement - Strategies for Peacekeeping in a Diverse Society" (Fourth Edition) is an absolute must-have for any police academy, corrections, or college law enforcement program. No other textbook covers such a wide range of topics in such depth concerning how criminal justice professionals are affected by diversity in the society and workforce. As a law enforcement officer with experience ranging from major metropolitan street patrol to Captain in charge of training, I have traveled extensively throughout the West Coast providing training to correctional and law enforcement officers in cultural diversity as well as arrest and control tactics, self-defense, and gun and baton retention. It is my professional opinion that this extraordinary volume will not replace, but instead will complement, the training necessary for street survival tactics, and that professionals who are trained with MULTICULTURAL LAW ENFORCEMENT (MLE) will be more likely to avoid resorting to the use of force. As presented in MLE-4, law enforcement professionals can better understand issues of respect and avoid perceived disrespect due to a lack of cultural awareness. Increased awareness often causes involved parties to be more cooperative and/or exhibit less resistance.

MLE is superior to other materials used in "sensitivity training" in the profession, in several respects. It provides "cultural diversity training" rather than "sensitivity" training, which has been shown to be counter-productive in military and paramilitary training, according to two Pentagon Reports. Each edition of MLE has addressed "hot-button" issues and made recommendations that would surely have prevented unnecessary lawsuits if only more officers had been trained with this text.

On September 19, 2007, the headline of the Los Angeles Independent read: "Jury Award Stands: An LAFD firefighter will receive $6.2 million after winning a harassment case." - These types of payouts that occur each year are specifically due to the type of ignorance of those who limit their professional portfolio to street survival techniques. We would all be better off if these millions of taxpayer dollars were instead spent putting more officers on the streets, providing more and better training, and offering superior equipment to improve officer and public safety.

All law enforcement administrators will realize the liability, and vicarious liability, that comes from not embracing the type of cultural diversity training explained in this easy-to-understand and highly beneficial text.

This book is garbage. It contains nothing that will help a police officer do their job safer or more effectively. This book is just a feel-good publication.

I thought this book was the most horrible thing I've ever read. The lies, half-truths and hypocrisies should have this book listed under fiction. How bad is this book. When you have to have someone, that is a source for the material in the book, come online and give it a positive review it can't be worth a damn. That's right. David E. Barlow (who hides in the halls of academia) is quoted throughout this book and found it necessary to come here and defend this book by giving it a 5 star review. Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. And the truth never needs defending.

This was among the 7 pieces of source material on my most recent exam. It was better than I expected. I looked at it from the perspective that I should use a person's culture to my advantage. With a familiarity of culture specific issues, I can make myself a more effective police officer. I found the author's writing to be of high quality, but book did not make me more culturally diverse. If you are looking for a book that teaches you how to be a police officer, this is not it. If you are looking for a book that might explain why the Iranian guy got mad at you last week, this is the right one.

I will simply say this about this text. This information is a must read for all who entertain the thought of being a police officer, be it city, county, state or federal. This text is crucial as an "additional tool" for officers; educating one's self in multi-cultural diversity is a good thing especially when taking into account the incredibly diverse population in the U.S. (A dozen scenarios of unecessarily escalated contact with police officers come to mind...)

I am a Lieutenant with the Indiana State Police and an adjunct criminal justice professor at a local college. My students are all interested in becoming police officers. For the most part they come from small towns in mostly white areas. The benefits of specific awareness/respect of other cultures will only help them should they reach their goal to become officers. The better educated more culturally aware officers are truly the most effective ones. Great investigators know how to relate to all kinds of people. This textbook gives us some insight into the communication barriers and cultural hot buttons as well as general behavioral aspects of others. I consider this topic a fundamental building block for a well rounded police officer. Through awareness and understanding we can perform our jobs better and better serve all of our citizens. (our duty) I think some of the previous reviews of this book must be from officers who are too stubborn to change or too disinterested to study. Most officers mistakenly believe that their skills at marksmanship, hand-to-hand self-defense, pursuit driving skills, physical fitness etc., are the most important attributes of a good police officer. Statististically speaking, officer safety and effectiveness improve dramatically by reversing the order and placing "communication" first in line. This text helps to point out better ways for officers to communicate to the people they are sworn to protect and serve. This improved communication has a residual increased officer safety. "I'd rather talk them into jail than fight all the way there..." My thoughts.

On the other hand, Philip Johnson was an active fascist sympathizer and active propagandist for the Nazi government, who had tried to implement fascism in USA for at least 8 years between 1932 and 1940. Details of this past are described in "WE CANNOT NOT KNOW HISTORY:" PHILIP JOHNSON'S POLITICS AND CYNICAL SURVIVAL by KAZYS VARNELIS in Journal of Architectural Education, November 1994 published also on the Internet, and also discussed at http://arch.designcommunity.com/viewtopic.php?t=3709.

This is a collection of papers that are related in some way to the topics of religion and music. I approached this book with several questions: What is the role of music in the religions of the world? What is the attitude of world religions towards music? However, very few essays in this book address these questions directly. In most similar books of edited papers, the introduction contains an overview of all the papers and how they fit together. Instead, Sullivan writes in his introduction a very philosophical piece on the meaning of music in general. A number of other essays are highly philosophical and rather hard to approach. Others are anthropological and highly descriptive, answering questions such as "What music is played during religious ceremonies of lesser known cultures and who plays the music? (Wakuenai-Hill; Choctaw-Levine; China-Pian)", or "Who was Major Jealous Divine, a reportedly musical pastor in early 20th century America?" (Harris), or "Where did the music of the Jewish people as an ethnic group originate?" (Shelemay). However, I found the 2 articles on music in Islam extremely illuminating, especially the one by Nasr, in which he lays out a typology of musical sounds in Islam from the religious, through the halal (permitted), to the contentious, to the haram (forbidden). Perhaps the questions I had in mind when I picked up this book are actually only interesting in an Islamic context. The other papers in the book are well written and will no doubt be of interest to someone, but they weren't what I was looking for.