Even beyond World War II, the Cold War, the tumultuous 1960s, and the numb 1970s, this generation lives with memories of factory hum and stink, vacant lots, junkyards, and railroad tracks; their residual child knowledge of the wasteland of land wasted by greed still rises every day with the sun. For the poets among them, there is the need to embrace this world in words, but the world resists. Levine, however, more than most poets, brings it to life in such poems as "Coming Home, Detroit, 1968," from
They Feed They Lion (1972):
A winter Tuesday, the city pouring fire,
Ford Rouge sulfurs the sun, Cadillac, Lincoln,
Chevy gray. The fat stacks
of breweries hold their tongues. Rags,
papers, hands, the stems of birches
dirtied with words ....
.....................
until the lights change and you go
forward to work. The charred faces, the eyes
boarded up, the rubble of innards, the cry
of wet smoke hanging in your throat,
the twisted river stopped at the color of iron.
We burn this city every day.
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