Culture
What Work Is, and Isn’t: Poet Laureate Philip Levine
In between grading student papers, revising my department’s mission statement, taking my son to soccer games, and following the Occupy Wall Street protests, I’ve been thinking about Phil Levine being named Poet Laureate for 2011- 2012. It’s about time: at 83, he has been writing powerful poetry for five decades. Nevertheless, in “Voice of the Workingman to be Poet Laureate,” the New York Times quotes the librarian of Congress who made the appointment as saying, “I find him an extraordinary discovery because he introduced me to a whole new world I hadn’t connected to in poetry before.” Clearly, those of us interested in bringing working-class literature into classrooms and to the forefront of the culture still have work to do. I’ve included Levine’s poems in three anthologies of working-class writing I have co-edited—two with Peter Oresick and one with Janet Zandy—and I teach them every chance I get.
