Philip LevineBy Conan Schuster

ArrangementLifeAwardsExplication/Literary termsExplication/Personal AnalysisCritical Analysis

LifeSecond of 3 sonsFather owned a car businessMother was a book sellerFather died at age 5Face anti-Semitism (he was Jewish) Age 14 he started working in a car manufacturing plant.

SchoolGraduated from Detroit Central High School and than attended Wayne UniversityIn 1957 he won the Jones Fellowship in poetry at Stanford UniversityIn 1958 he started teaching at English department at California State

Awards2011 Appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to Library of Congress1995 Pulitzer Prize1991 National Book Award

“Nobody was speaking for them. And as young people will, you know, I took this foolish vow that I would speak for them and that’s what my life would be. And sure enough I’ve gone and done it. Or I’ve tried anyway…”(Poetry Foundation)

“I saw that the people that I was working with…were voiceless in a way,”(Poetry Foundation)

“Before the War”

Seeing his mother coming homehe kneels behind a parked car,one hand over his mouth to still his breathing. She passes, climbsthe stairs, and again the street is his

Enjambment- thought continuing after line break Caesura- pausesImagery- sense experience shown through language

We’re in an American city, Toledo, sometime in the last century, though it could be Buffalo or Flint,the places are the same exceptfor the names.

Enjambment- thought continuing after line break Caesura- pauses

Explication A boy playing in the street just wants a few more minutes outside so he hides behind a car to avoid detection. Levine than applies this typical scenario to the whole country.

At eight or nine,even at eleven, kids are the same, without an identity, without a soul,things with bad teeth and bad clothes.

We could give them names, we couldname the mother Gertrude, and give hera small office job typing bills of ladingeight hours a day five and a halfdays a week.

ExplicationKids are young, and impressionable. They have fun and sometimes forget to brush their teeth. They don’t care how they look. They just want to have fun.

. Gertrude (which means: “Spear of Strength”) works tirelessly to provide for her children.

We could give herdreams of marriage to the bosswho’s already married, but wedon’t because she loathes him.

It’s her son, Sol, she loves,the one still hiding with one kneedown on the concrete drawingthe day’s last heat. He’s got feelings.

Illumination

The mother hates her boss. However, she needs to have money to support her child. Her son, Sol(which means: “the sun”), sits on the concrete alone drawing. Ironic that he’s drawing the days last heat when his name means “sun”. I interrupt this as his child hood ending. Foreshadows his death.

Young as he is he can feel heat,cold, pain, just as a dog wouldand like a dog he’ll answerto his name. Go ahead, call him,“Hey, Solly, Solly boy, come here!”

He doesn’t bark, he doesn't’t sit,he doesn’t beg or extend one pawin a gesture of submission.He accepts his whole name, evenas a kid he stands and faces us,

ClarificationSol is young, blind and without a path. He still responds like a dog, not old enough to have formed his own opinions completely. When put on the spot he doesn’t knowhow to respond. He just stands and looks.

Just as eleven years from nowhe’ll stand and face his deathflaming toward him on a bridge-head at Remagen

while Gertrudegoes on typing mechanicallyinto the falling winter night.

ExplanationIn this scene Gertrude is reflecting on the death of her son and her life. Into the falling winter night implies a dark feeling that doesn't’t end. She is still falling and still typing about her regrets.

Personal Analysis• Levine writes about the oppressiveness of American Society by creating a poem in the first personof a single working mom. He uses Gertrude as a analogy for all people in her similar situation.

Critical Analysis“A large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland’ according to Edward Hirsch in the New York Times Book Review, Philip Levine is one of the elder statesmen of contemporary American poetry.”(Poetry Foundation 1)Herbert Leibowitz says, “Levine has returned again and again in his poems to the lives of factory workers trapped by poverty and the drudgery of the assembly line, which breaks the body and scars the spirit.”(Poetry Foundation 2)

Works Cited"Philip Levine." : The Poetry Foundation. Web. 13 May 2013."Biography of Philip Levine." Poemhunter. Web. 14 May 2013.

Google Images