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DURING THE PAST 40 YEARS, PHILIP LEVINE, NEARLY ALONE AMONG OUR POETS, HAS taken up the grief, exhaustion, rage, perplexity, and longings of low-wage factory workers in twentieth century America. In a culture where marginalized workers and their lives-and especially the work itself-have for decades nearly disappeared as a serious subject, Levine has continued to write astonishing, lyrical, complex, plain-spoken poems about laborers and their lives. And remarkably, for this oeuvre, which includes eighteen books of poetry (most recently Breath, just out), he has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and a host of other awards and grants. I say remarkably, because Levine has set himself against the elite poetic tradition that tends to prefer ambiguity over accessibility and moral disinterest over conviction.
BORN IN DETROIT IN 1928 TO RUSSIAN Jewish immigrants, Levine worked a succession of grueling auto plant jobs. This experience, his 25 years growing up in Detroit during the heyday of the auto industry, the rampant anti-Semitism and pervasive racial injustice that erupted in the Detroit race riots of 1943, provide the grist for much of his writing. In his collection of autobiographical essays, he offers, "At age four-teen my twin brother and I vowed we would never participate in the corporate business of this country, a business that appalled us by the brutality of its exploitation of the people we most loved." While much of mainstream contemporary poetry has veered toward a confessional preoccupation with the poet's personal life and family history, and taken up residence in the suburbs, Levine, now 76, continues to churn out poems from lower Broadway, the night shift, the school room, and the world beyond.
Much of his poetry about the world beyond has centered on the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s. A self-proclaimed anarchist, admiring of, but too young to have joined, the soldiers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Levine lived for two stints in Spain under Franco during the 1960s. He has written a number of poems dedicated to the Spanish anarchist struggle and its heroes, (including "Francisco, I'll Bring You Red Carnations," "Ask The Roses," and "On The Murder of Lieutenant Jose Del Castillo By The Falangist Bravo Martinez, July 12, 1936"), and many poems imbued with...