Afterword to The Darkening Trapeze: Last Poems of Larry Levis (2016) After Larry Levis’s death in May 1996, his sister, Sheila Brady, asked his oldest friend, former teacher, and lifelong mentor, Philip Levine, if he would be willing to edit a posthumous collection of Larry’s poems. Levine agreed, and he asked me if I would help him look through what …
Among those poets who have been Philip Levine’s students at some point in their lives — and I am assuming that includes almost all of the poets in this collection – there is a clear consensus that there simply was not and is not any more passionate, wise, hilarious, useful, fearsome, brilliant, loyal, or inspiring teacher of poetry, as literature …
I have always believed that the great strength of American poetry resides, at its source, in its plurality of voices, its multitude of poetic styles, and its consistent resistance to the coercion of what emerges – in each generation – as a catalogue of prevailing literary trends. That is, we are, as American poets, culturally alert to complexity and verbal …
Breath’s Urgent Song: Philip Levine’s “Call It Music” The final poem in Philip Levine’s collection Breath, the poem from which Levine has drawn the title for this volume, is a stunning piece entitled “Call It Music.” The opening of the poem locates Levine, “alone here/ in Brooklyn” while the “radio is playing/ Bird Flight, Parker in his California/ tragic voice …
Notes On A Son’s Homecoming Some years ago I was asked by W. T. Pfefferle to write an introduction for his book, The Poetry of Place, a collection of interviews he’d conducted with American poets about the importance of place and local landscape in their poetry. In thinking of this essay, I re-read that introduction and came upon this passage …
