My Lost Poets: A Life in Poetry

by Philip Levine

Overview

Essays, speeches, and journal entries from one of our most admired and best-loved poets that illuminate how he came to understand himself as a poet, the events and people that he wrote about, and the older poets who influenced him.

In prose both as superbly rendered as his poetry and as down-to-earth and easy as speaking, Levine reveals the things that made him the poet he became. In the title essay, originally the final speech of his poet laureate year, he recounts how as a boy he composed little speeches walking in the night woods near his house and how he later realized these were his first poems. He wittily takes on the poets he studied with in the Iowa Writing Program: John Berryman, who was his great teacher and lifelong friend, and Robert Lowell, who was neither. His deepest influences--jazz, Spain, the working people of Detroit--are reflected in many of the pieces. There are essays on Spanish poets he admires, William Carlos Williams, Wordsworth, Keats, and others. A wonderful, moving collection of writings that add to our knowledge and appreciation of Philip Levine--both the man and the poet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451493293
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/08/2016
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	666 KB

About the Author

PHILIP LEVINE was born in 1928 in Detroit and attended Wayne State University. After a succession of industrial jobs, he left the city for good and lived in various parts of the country before settling in Fresno, California, where he taught at the state university until his retirement. He was the author of twenty collections of poetry and was the recipient of two National Book Awards and the Pulitzer Prize, among many other honors. He was poet laureate from 2011 until 2012, and served twelve autumns as poet-in-residence at New York University. He died in February 2015.

Hometown:

Fresno, California

Date of Birth:

January 10, 1928

Place of Birth:

Detroit, Michigan

Education:

B.A., Wayne State University; M.F.A., Iowa Writers Workshop, University of Iowa

Editorial Reviews

10/03/2016
The last completed book from the late Levine (News of the World), a former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize–winner, collects original and previously published essays that revolve around artistic development—the poems and poets that shaped Levine’s distinct voice—as well as the circumstances that eventually led to his celebrated vocation. Though there is a chronology to the organization of the chapters , they can just as easily stand on their own as individual works; for example, the final chapter, a reading of Keats and Whitman, reads more like a critical essay than a memoir. Unsurprisingly, Levine’s prose is often poetic, from his earliest recollections of composing poems in the “double dark” to his reminiscence of jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown and his music: “pure, free, clear, as water was in my early years.” Levine writes at one point of how a poem hits first “in the gut” and then in the intellect, and his descriptions of his life, brimming with nostalgia and imagination, operate similarly. Like so many of Levine’s poems, this book evinces a commitment to evoking hard-won experience and bringing it to lyric life . (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Delightful reading. . . . Levine excels at telling good stories and drawing memorable portraits of people.” —Charles Simic, The New York Review of Books

“A balancing act between melancholy and the thrill of discovery . . . [This work] belongs in every library where the poetry collection matters—and that should be every library.” —Herman Sutter, Library Journal (starred review)

“You never get the sense that the poet, despite advancing years, is looking over his shoulder to posterity. Instead he looks directly at you, the world and the mysteries of his soul.” —Paul Wilner, San Francisco Chronicle

"Warmhearted, robustly beautiful autobiographical essays . . . Crisply rendered memories and observations are conveyed with abiding tenderness, self-deprecation, sharp humor, and steely lyricism, all shaped by [Levine’s] profound thankfulness for his guiding lights, his 'lost poets.' . . . This is vital and affecting testimony to what it means to live as a poet in a largely indifferent, relentlessly churning world." —Donna Seaman, Booklist
 
"A sparkling collection of essays . . . full of scintillating remembrances of fellow poets . . . Like his poetry, generous, honest, and real." —Kirkus Reviews
 
"Like so many of Levine’s poems, this book evinces a commitment to evoking a hard-won experience and bringing it to lyric life." —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

★ 11/15/2016
National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Levine's (1928–2015) poetry is intense, stirring, and fiercely powerful. This collection of ten prose pieces offers a rambling, sometimes boisterous, evocation of how Levine came to be a poet, and most effectively, an informal reminiscence on the poets who shaped his work and his soul. Most of the writings started as talks and have the informal, slightly digressive feel of a public address. The title piece may be the most accessible to the general reader. An autobiographical sketch, it describes (obliquely) Levine's discovery of poetry, his gift for the craft, and the young and long-forgotten writers who inspired, challenged, and breathed the life of verse into him. What is most fascinating about much of this book is the balancing act between melancholy and the thrill of discovery—a sensation found both in the text and echoing in the reader as the book is closed, as the memory of so many lost poets remains. VERDICT Though this work may have limited appeal for general readers, it belongs in every library where the poetry collection matters—and that should be every library.—Herman Sutter, St. Agnes Acad., Houston

Library Journal

2016-09-17
One of our finest poets recalls a life well lived in poetry.A former American Poet Laureate and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, Levine (News of the World, 2009, etc.) was in the process of finishing this sparkling collection of essays and lectures when he died (1928-2015). His good friend and fellow poet Edward Hirsch helped to complete the project. In the title piece, which Hirsch calls one of the great textured descriptions of a writer finding his vocation, Levine describes in loving detail discovering a group of fellow aspiring poets at Detroits Wayne University, where he read and wrote poetry with a small group of enthusiastic, like-minded undergraduates. Where would I have been without all of themthe poets he discovered and the friends who shared with me their faith in the power of the perfect words. In a piece on the influence his master, Williams Carlos Williams, had on his early career, Levine acknowledges that Williams poems, written in the spoken language of my country, turned him away from his English masters toward the effort to create a poetry original and audacious enough to be American. Great poets dont always make great teachers. Levine attended the University of Iowa in the fall of 1953 and took Robert Lowells class. Lowell taught badly, and students started dropping out. John Berryman, on the other hand, captivated the students: Never again would I encounter so great a poem [by Dylan Thomas] so perfectly presented. The book is full of scintillating remembrances of fellow poets. Berryman could be both brilliant and candid, but Thom Gunn had an aura, a sort of inner beauty that was manifest in all of his actions. Levine also speaks lovingly of his mentor and friend George Hitchcock and his seminal literary magazine, kayak, and his piece on little-known Roberta Spear, who died young, will have readers rushing to her work. Like his poetry, Levines essays are generous, honest, and real.

Kirkus Reviews