May 24, 2013
Philip Levine
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And that subject matter provokes Levine's best poems. The recent "Drum" takes its subtitle from a job location: "Leo's Tool & Die, 1950." In the poem Levine describes the lives of the people who work there with him, who "sweep, wash up, punch out, collect outside / for a final smoke." At the end even this small job shot finds an almost mythic connection:
| The slow light of Friday morning in Michigan, the one we waited for, shows seven hills of scraped earth topped with crab grass, weeds, a black oil drum empty, glistening at the exact center of the modern world. |
Philip Levine reads from his poems at the Michigan League on Tuesday, October 8.
[Originally published in October, 2002.]
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