In the mood for poetry: Philip Levine

Philip Levine, "known for his emphasis on the voice of the ordinary workingman and the industrial heartland" (as Dwight Garner writes on the NYT), is the new Poet Laureate of America.

And, according to the NYT, "Americans are rushing to read poetry". "One day after Philip Levine was named the next poet laureate, his books have quickly sold out (...) making it nearly impossible to immediately acquire copies of some collections of his poems. On the Amazon.com 'Movers and Shakers' list, which tracks books that are growing the most quickly in popularity, two by Mr. Levine were at the top of the list: 'What Work Is', a collection of poems that won a National Book Award, and 'The Simple Truth', a collection that won a Pulitzer Prize".

Here's one of my favourite poems of his.

The Simple Truth

I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes,

took them home, boiled them in their jackets
and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
Then I walked through the dried fields
on the edge of town. In middle June the light
hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,
and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds
were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers
squawking back and forth, the finches still darting
into the dusty light. The woman who sold me
the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone
out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses
praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables
at the road-side stand and urging me to taste
even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way,
she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat" she said,
"Even if you don't I'll say you did."
Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.
My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965
before I went away, before he began to kill himself,
and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste
what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch
of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,
it stays in the back of your throat like a truth
you never uttered because the time was always wrong,
it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,
made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,
in a form we have no words for, and you live on it. 

And here's another one:

The Fox

I think I must have lived

Once before, not as a man or woman

But as a small, quick fox pursued

Through fields of grass and grain

By ladies and gentlement on horseback.

This would explain my nose

And the small dark tufts of hair

That rise from the base of my spine.

It would explain why I am

So seldom invited out to dinner

And when I am I am never

Invited back. It would explain

My loathing for those on horseback

In Central Park and how I can

So easily curse them and challenge

The men to fight and why no matter

How big they are or how young

They refuse to dismount,

For at such times, rock in hand,

I must seem demented.

My anger is sudden and total,

For I am a man to whom anger

Usually comes slowly, spreading

Like a fever along my shoulders

And back and turning my stomach

To a stone, but this fox anger

Is lyrical and complete, as I stand

In the pathway shouting and refusing

To budge, feeling the dignity

Of the small creature menaced

By the many and larger. Yes,

I must have been that unseen fox

Whose breath sears the thick bushes

And whose eyes burn like opals

In the darkness, who humps

And shits gleefully in the horsepath

Softened by moonlight and goes on

Feeling the steady measured beat

Of his fox heart like a wordless

Delicate song, and the quick forepaws

Choosing the way unerringly

And the thick furred body following

While the tail flows upward,

Too beautiful a plume for anyone

Except a creature who must proclaim

Not ever ever ever

To mounted ladies and their gentlemen.