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Philip Levine. By Conan Schuster. Life. Second of 3 sons Father owned a car business Mother was a book seller Father died at age 5 Face anti-Semitism (he was Jewish) Age 14 he started working in a car manufacturing plant. School.
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Philip Levine By Conan Schuster
Life • Second of 3 sons • Father owned a car business • Mother was a book seller • Father died at age 5 • Face anti-Semitism (he was Jewish) • Age 14 he started working in a car manufacturing plant.
School • Graduated from Detroit Central High School and than attended Wayne University • In 1957 he won the Jones Fellowship in poetry at Stanford University • In 1958 he started teaching at English department at California State
Awards • 2011 Appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to Library of Congress • 1995 Pulitzer Prize • 1991 National Book Award
“I saw that the people that I was working with…were voiceless in a way,”(Poetry Foundation) “Nobody was speaking for them. And as young people will, you know, I took this foolish vow that I would speak for them and that’s what my life would be. And sure enough I’ve gone and done it. Or I’ve tried anyway…”(Poetry Foundation)
Seeing his mother coming home he kneels behind a parked car, one hand over his mouth to still his breathing. She passes, climbs the stairs, and again the street is his Enjambment-thought continuing after line break Caesura- pauses Imagery- sense experience shown through language
Enjambment- thought continuing after line break Caesura- pauses We’re in an American city, Toledo, sometime in the last century, though it could be Buffalo or Flint, the places are the same except for the names.
Explication A boy playing in the street just wants a few more minutes outside so he hides behind a car to avoid detection. Levine than applies this typical scenario to the whole country.
At eight or nine, Even at eleven, kids are the same, Without an identity, without a soul, Things with bad teeth and bad clothes.
We could give them names, we could Name the mother Gertrude, and give her A small office job typing bills of lading Eight hours a day five and a half days a week.
Explication Kids are young, and impressionable. They have fun and sometimes forget to brush their teeth. They don’t care how they look. They just want to have fun. . Gertrude (which means: “Spear of Strength”) works tirelessly to provide for her children.
We could give her dreams of marriage to the boss who’s already married, but we don’t because she loathes him.
It’s her son, Sol, she loves, the one still hiding with one knee down on the concrete drawing the day’s last heat. He’s got feelings.
Illumination The mother hates her boss. However, she needs to have money to support her child. Her son, Sol(which means: “the sun”), sits on the concrete alone drawing. Ironic that he’s drawing the days last heat when his name means “sun”. I interrupt this as his child hood ending. Foreshadows his death.
Young as he is he can feel heat, cold, pain, just as a dog would and like a dog he’ll answer to his name. Go ahead, call him, “Hey, Solly, Solly boy, come here!”
He doesn't’t bark, he doesn't’t sit, he doesn't’t beg or extend one paw in a gesture of submission. He accepts his whole name, even as a kid he stands and faces us,
Clarification Sol is young, blind and without a path. He still responds like a dog, not old enough to have formed his own opinions completely. When put on the spot he doesn’tknowhow to respond. He just stands and looks.
Just as eleven years from now he’ll stand and face his death flaming toward him on a bridge- head at Remagen
--------------- While Gertrude goes on typing mechanically into the falling winter night.
Works Cited "Philip Levine." : The Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2013. Google Images
