SOURCE: Review of New Selected Poems and What Work Is in Hudson Review, Vol. XLIV, No. 4, Winter, 1992, pp. 681-682.

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 that Levine is a superb poet.

Except for the addition of fifteen poems culled from Sweet Will (1985) and A Walk with Tom Jefferson (1988), Philip Levine's New Selected Poems is identical with his Selected Poems (1984), right down to pagination and typeface. New Selected Poems, which serves to consolidate the poet's move from his previous publisher to Knopf, will be of interest primarily to readers new to Levine's poetry. New Selected Poems was published simultaneously with What Work Is, a frequently brilliant collection of new poems. The book's recurrent metaphor for work is burning, a metaphor that is introduced in the...