“Lately I’ve been running by day, drinking by night, as though first to build a man and then destroy him…” -from ‘Words’ by Philip Levine
The story of my life……
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In praise of Phillip Levine:
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ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/levine … y_lion.php
-From ‘They Feed They Lion’ by Philip Levine
?: does this poem have the same feel as The Smith’s How Soon is Now ([video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/sear … ion=click(](https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-pty-pty_converter&hsimp=yhs-pty_converter&hspart=pty&p=the+smiths+how+soon+is+now#id=1&vid=7ab45d4efa2d7fcba0ee9c92776998c5&action=click() to anyone else……
I would also note what I call “the apocalyptic style” in it, that similar to Ginsberg’s Howl: that which runs through a series of images that feel loosely connected. And we can easily feel the influence of Yeat’s ‘The Second Coming’.
That said, the above poem pretty much typifies the reason I have come to love Levine’s poetry and why I have (after many years (returned to his selected poems: that kind of grimy, oil stained feel of someone negotiating an industrialized and unjust environment through a kind of reverence via struggle.
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“My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says”
-from Levine’s poem ‘You Can Have It’
It’s been interesting returning to Levine in the age of Trump in that you recognize Trump’s potential followers (those negotiating an industrialized and unjust system (in it. And let’s be clear: this is not to assume that Levine would be some kind of Trump mouthpiece. In fact, I would argue that Levine’s interests were a little more Marxist in nature while also seeing the futility of resistance (see ‘Not This Pig’ and ‘Baby Villon’).
And, of course, the scariest thing about it is that Trump seems to want to return us to that grimy, oil-stained environment that Levine was dealing with. And if Trump succeeds we can only hope to approach it with the same spiritual fallback that Levine describes.