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Home >> Arts >> Literature >> Authors >> L >> Levine, Philip |
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Philip Levine, the Jewish American poet, was born around 1928 in Detroit, Michigan. Growing higher, his parents told him he was Spanish; "Why my parents, both born in a little shtetl in western Russia, would tell me this, I have no idea. But it may have had something to do with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492." As a youth, Levine faced the anti-Semitism embodied by a local celebrity, the pro-Hitler radio priest Father Coughlin. He was educated at Wayne University, okay, Wayne State University, and held the series of industrial jobs prior to he left Detroit. He was an anarchist who claimed that "property is theft" until he bought his 1st home. He one of these days settled inside Fresno, California to teach and write. Levine's poetry oftentimes features fauna, a mill-h& of Detroit and a subverter of the Spanish Civil War. Around 1995 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry, one of his many awards. Levine's most famous verse form is probably "They Feed They Lion" (1972). A title occurs as punning ("lion" = "lying"). "They" could refer to a rich men world health organization parasitically prey on the honest-working underclass & with cynicism claim to exist as helping the downtrodden. Then again, "they" can refer to workers world health organization come incurring "fed up" & come "lying in wait" for their chance to retaliate. A second one of his popular verse form is "Animals Are Passing from Our Lives" (1968). Written from either a point of watch of an unflustered pig facing slaughter, it mixes homo & sensual behavior to funny result. In the swine's opinion, the homo astir to become butchered would lack his cast-iron control, & would instead "squeal and shit like a new housewife discovering television." the pig can be a symbol for the used worker world health organization is unafraid to die since he has nothing else to lose...or even it might represent a treacherously machismo espoused per equivalent worker world health organization is as well afraid to rebel. Occasionally of Levine's more verse form include "Belle Isle, 1949," "The Horse," "Rain Downriver," "Saturday Sweeping," "Sweet Will," "What Work Is" & "You Can Have It."
Citations
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Interview with Philip Levine "An Atlantic Unbound interview with Philip Levine." Philip Levine "The Academy of American Poets presents a biography, photograph, and selected poems." |
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