Philip Levine

I just went to a poetry reading by Philip Levine. Up in his 80s it was hard for him to escape identifying with his age. Still Levine read and delivered some fine poems, cracked some jokes, and kept the audience's attention with a bit of profanity mixed in.

Here is a sample from his poem "Two"

"And the lovers?" you ask. I wrote nothing about lovers.
Take a look. Clouds, trucks, traffic lights, a diner, work,
a wooden shoe, East Moline, poached eggs, the perfume
of frying bacon, the chaos of language, the spices
of spent breath after eight hours of night work.
Can you hear all I feared and never dared to write?
Why the two are more real than either you or me,
why I never returned to keep them in my life,
how little I now mean to myself or anyone else,
what any of this could mean, where you found
the patience to endure these truths and confessions?

Levine's style draws to that which is missing in our souls, and seems to have been stolen by the common objects of life which distracts us.

His second last poem was one on death where he states "and so I will rest, free at last". The whole poem hinted toward death being a time where we can finally escape the images of ourselves which burden us as our own, and obscure whatever it is that is enduring and real in us.