Philip Levine Critical Essay | Critical Review by Jeff Parker Knight

SOURCE: Review of The Simple Truth in Prairie Schooner, Vol. 71, No. 2, Summer, 1997, pp. 179-82.

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 reason for anyone to continue believing the old maxim that poets will have done their best work by middle age. Following the example of Robert Penn Warren, a number of American poets—among them A. R. Ammons, Maxine Kumin, and Donald Hall—are writing excellent poems past age sixty. For the reader who has watched a poet's literary life unfold, reading a first-rate collection of new poems from a longtime favorite is deeply satisfying. So it is with the … most recent [book] from Philip Levine….

Philip Levine … is interested in the holiness of daily life, the beauty of bare existence. American poets have spent a good deal...
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