An Abandoned Factory, Detroit (Philip Levine Poems)
The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands, An iron authority against the snow, And this grey monument to common ...
Philip Levine Poems (94 Poems)
The New World (Philip Levine Poems)
A man roams the streets with a basket of freestone peaches hollering, "Peaches, peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale." My ...
The Water’s Chant (Philip Levine Poems)
Seven years ago I went into the High Sierras stunned by the desire to die. For hours I stared into ...
Passing Out (Philip Levine Poems)
The doctor fingers my bruise. "Magnificent," he says, "black at the edges and purple cored." Seated, he spies for clues, ...
A Woman Waking (Philip Levine Poems)
She wakens early remembering her father rising in the dark lighting the stove with a match scraped on the floor. ...
Heaven (Philip Levine Poems)
If you were twenty-seven and had done time for beating our ex-wife and had no dreams you remembered in the ...
Detroit Grease Shop Poem (Philip Levine Poems)
Four bright steel crosses, universal joints, plucked out of the burlap sack -- "the heart of the drive train," the ...
The Red Shirt (Philip Levine Poems)
"...his poems that no one reads anymore become dust, wind, nothing, like the insolent colored shirt he bought to die ...
Making Light Of It (Philip Levine Poems)
I call out a secret name, the name of the angel who guards my sleep, and light grows in the ...
Then (Philip Levine Poems)
A solitary apartment house, the last one before the boulevard ends and a dusty road winds its slow way out ...
They Feed They Lion (Philip Levine Poems)
Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread, Out of the acids ...
Those Were The Days (Philip Levine Poems)
The sun came up before breakfast, perfectly round and yellow, and we dressed in the soft light and shook out ...
The Dead (Philip Levine Poems)
A good man is seized by the police and spirited away. Months later someone brags that he shot him once ...
Voyages (Philip Levine Poems)
Pond snipe, bleached pine, rue weed, wart -- I walk by sedge and brown river rot to where the old ...
Picture Postcard From The Other World (Philip Levine Poems)
Since I don't know who will be reading this or even if it will be read, I must invent someone ...
Green Thumb (Philip Levine Poems)
Shake out my pockets! Harken to the call Of that calm voice that makes no sound at all! Take of ...
Night Words (Philip Levine Poems)
after Juan Ramon A child wakens in a cold apartment. The windows are frosted. Outside he hears words rising from ...
Coming Close (Philip Levine Poems)
Take this quiet woman, she has been standing before a polishing wheel for over three hours, and she lacks twenty ...
Another Song (Philip Levine Poems)
Words go on travelling from voice to voice while the phones are still and the wires hum in the cold. ...
For The Country (Philip Levine Poems)
THE DREAM This has nothing to do with war or the end of the world. She dreams there are gray ...
Making It Work (Philip Levine Poems)
3-foot blue cannisters of nitro along a conveyor belt, slow fish speaking the language of silence. On the roof, I ...
In A Vacant House (Philip Levine Poems)
Someone was calling someone; now they've stopped. Beyond the glass the rose vines quiver as in a light wind, but ...
What Work Is (Philip Levine Poems)
We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work ...
Last Words (Philip Levine Poems)
If the shoe fell from the other foot who would hear? If the door opened onto a pure darkness and ...
M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School–Detroit, 1942 (Philip Levine Poems)
He made a line on the blackboard, one bold stroke from right to left diagonally downward and stood back to ...
Milkweed (Philip Levine Poems)
Remember how unimportant they seemed, growing loosely in the open fields we crossed on the way to school. We would ...
Sierra Kid (Philip Levine Poems)
"I've been where it hurts." the Kid He becomes Sierra Kid I passed Slimgullion, Morgan Mine, Camp Seco, and the ...
Berenda Slough (Philip Levine Poems)
Earth and water without form, change, or pause: as if the third day had not come, this calm norm of ...
Among Children (Philip Levine Poems)
I walk among the rows of bowed heads-- the children are sleeping through fourth grade so as to be ready ...
Call It Music (Philip Levine Poems)
Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song in my own breath. I'm alone here in Brooklyn Heights, late ...