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Philip Levine.
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Philip Levine was born in Detroit to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. After graduation from Wayne State University in 1950, he worked at a series of menial jobs and then left Detroit "for good." He m...
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In the following essay, Mills traces the development of Levine's themes from On the Edge to Red Dust and They Feed They Lion.
We livethe way we are—PL., "The Sadness of Lemons...
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In the following excerpt, Bedient asserts that Levine's poetry has shifted from "bereft and skeptical" towards romanticism.
The drama of Levine's career lies in his movemen...
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In the following review, Stitt compares 7 Years from Somewhere with Ashes, contending Ashes is a more powerful and imaginative work.
Because lyric poetry is spoken in a direct and seemingly intimate v...
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In the following excerpt, Hosmer counters criticism that espouses the view that Levine is not a poet but "simply a memoir writer in prose."
Ever since the publication of his first major ...
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In the following review, Frost discusses Levine 's poetic influences and favorably reviews New Selected Poems and What Work Is.
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Exceptional poets come in two kinds: those whose territory is s...
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In the following interview, Levine answers questions from students at Davidson College regarding his method and style of writing, the political relevance of poetry, and his most recent collection, The...
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In the following review, Hugo lauds Levine's poetry collection, The Names of the Lost, stressing in particular the poems' emotional depth.
Philip Levine knows a few things so well that h...
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In the following review, Hudgins considers Levine's New Selected Poems and What Work Is. He is particularly complimentary of the latter work, declaring that it is a brilliant collection and tha...
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In the following review of New Selected Poems and What Work Is, Frost not only considers the poems of these two books, but also ranges over the spectrum of Levine's wider output and poetic care...
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In the following review of The Bread of Fire: Toward an Autobiography, Eder discusses some of the prominent aspects of Levine's life.
"I don't understand. I don't understan...
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In the following review, Gioia considers The Bread of Time, Levine's collection of autobiographical essays. Though Gioia praises certain facets of the work, he also criticizes it for certain sh...
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In the following interview, conducted in Harry Thomas's English class at Davidson College on April 25, 1995, Levine answers questions about the sources and subject matter of his poetry as well ...
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In the following essay, originally published in Boulevard, Volumes 25 and 26, Stein discusses Levine's historical consciousness. He analyzes Levine's insistence that the past is in const...
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In the following excerpt, Knight briefly considers the role of truth and reality in Levine's poems and also mentions Levine's "mastery of craft."
There's just no rea...
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In the following excerpt, Grosholz discusses Levine's focus on and praise of the ordinary.
… Philip Levine's poems in One for the Rose often begin in the midst of the ordinary: ...
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In the following review, Tillinghast applauds the poetry in One for the Rose for its readability and declares that "Belief" is one of the age's outstanding poems.
"A good p...
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In the following essay, Marchant discusses the spirit of anarchism in Levine's poetry.
Not many people in the United States would call themselves anarchists, but the poet Philip Levine does. In...
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In the following essay, St. John considers Levine's career and asserts that his poetry "has become both the pulse and conscience of American poetry."
The publication of Philip Lev...
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In the following review, Marchant considers Levine's humanistic faith and the nature of spirituality in his poetry.
In a dozen books over the last twenty-five years, one of Philip Levine'...
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In the following essay, Hirsch considers the evolution of Levine's poetry and its gradual change in themes and attitudes. He declares it begins in rage, grows into elegy, and culminates in cele...
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In the following review, Gregerson considers some of the major themes in Levine's poetry, both in this collection and elsewhere.
New York, Detroit, Fresno, Medford: from a shifting home front, ...
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In the following essay, Chess discusses the Jewishness of Levine's poetry. He contends that when Levine tackles an explicitly Jewish topic, the result is often cliché. However, when he w...
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