Philip Levine, U.S. poet laureate who wrote of working life, dies at 87

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Philip Levine, U.S. poet laureate who wrote of working life, dies at 87

By Matt Schudel February 17

Philip Levine, a former poet laureate of the United States who grew up working on the factory floors of Detroit and whose plainspoken poems often evoked the drudgery and dignity of manual labor, died Feb. 14 at his home in Fresno, Calif. He was 87. ... His wife, Frances A. Levine, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.

Mr. Levine did not publish his first volume of verse until his mid-30s, but over time he became one of the country’s most highly honored poets. He won the Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Awards before serving as poet laureate in 2011 and 2012.

He was an amateur boxer in his youth, held jobs where he wore shirts embroidered with the name “Phil” and knew how to rebuild the universal joint of a car’s powertrain. He never completely left the blue-collar life behind, as he wrote about a world of sweat and sinew seldom seen in American poetry since Carl Sandburg or even Walt Whitman. ... “I believed,” Mr. Levine said in an interview with the Academy of American Poets, “that if I could transform my experience into poetry I would give it the value and dignity it did not begin to possess on its own.”
....

Mr. Levine began working at 14 and held a series of what he called “stupid jobs.” Over time, though, he came to believe that there was an inherent value in work, a sense of decency and honor. ... “He elevates the experience of working people into something that is able to impart a little wisdom to us,” Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said in 2011 when he named Mr. Levine to the position of poet laureate. “He’s the laureate, if you like, of the industrial heartland. It’s a very, very American voice.”

[shenmue]

1. Rest in peace