000			01715nam a2200241 a 4500
001			011600
005			20231009192148.0
008			111101s1994 nyu 000 0 eng
010			_a94014508
020			_a0679765840
050	0	0	_aPS3562.E9 _bS56 1994
082	0	0	_a811.54 LEV
100	1		_aLevine, Philip _d(, 1928-)
245	1	4	_aThe simple truth _b: poems _c/ by Philip Levine.
250			_a1st ed.
260			_aNew York _b: Alfred A. Knopf _c, 1994.
300			_aviii, 69 p. _c; 24 cm.
500			_a2011 Poet laureate.
520			_aLevine's third book of new verse in six years offers further proof that since turning 60 his drive to explain his relationship to the world has never been stronger. For him, experience and knowledge are not given but are almost consciously wrested from life ("I'm an American,/even before I was fourteen I knew I would have/to create myself"). Though the usual touchstones of his work-adolescence in the 1940s, the death of Garcia Lorca, Detroit's industrial landscape-are ever present, this collection is more consistently narrative and elegiac than previous ones, elevating the minutiae of personal remembrance to an almost mythic significance, which in turn gives way to the larger permanence and mystery of existence as represented by night sky vistas and the forces of history. Levine has been so much imitated that his diction and style are now the standard for much current mainstream poetry; thus, his work sometimes seems all too familiar, but few readers will fail to be moved by its earnest effort to reconcile life as lived both outside and inside the mind.
586			_aPulitzer Prize in Poetry, 1995.
650		4	_aPoetry, American
942			_cMO
999			_c230603 _d230603