Philip Levine
Philip Levine
Philip Levinewas a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for more than thirty years in the English department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well. He served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2000 to 2006, and was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2011–2012...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth10 January 1928
CountryUnited States of America
Corruption is subtle, just like the Bible said. Many young poets have come to me and asked, How am I gonna make it? They feel, and often with considerable justice, that they are being overlooked while others with less talent are out there making careers for themselves. I always give the same advice. I say, Do it the hard way, and you’ll always feel good about yourself. You write because you have to, and you get this unbelievable satisfaction from doing it well. Try to live on that as long as you’re able.
I write what's given me to write.
I'm in a situation now, and I have been for ten or fifteen years, where there's no point in my being in a hurry.
My mother worked full-time so I was largely ungoverned, free to roam the streets of Detroit from an early age and research the poems to come, a tiny Walt Whitman going among powerful, uneducated people.
My father's life seemed and still seems utterly mysterious to me. He came alone to the States from Russia at age eleven.
I think in the best poems I make a lot of discoveries about voice, about subject, about what my real feelings are.