Subject: Chronogram Poetry Submission
July, 2008 (Chunghoo)
Hello John,
Thank you for submitting your poetry to Chronogram. As you may already know, I have decided to publish "Haiku/Childhood River..." in our July, 2008 issue. Good work.
Phillip Levine
The selected haiku;
childhood river
so Small
it has become
Being published is always a treasured experience for me. I was
overjoyed when Phillip, a literary giant in the United States, sent an email to tell me my haiku Childhod River has been published in Chronogram where Phillip is the Poetry Editor.
It is just a haiku but it means a lot to me to be in print and read in New York especially. Here is a biography of Phillip's work and achievements. I wish I could work more closely with him.
Philip Levine's Poems
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives
--------------------------------------------
It's wonderful how I jog on
four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.
I'm to market. I can smell
the sour, grooved block,
I can smell the blade that
opens the hole and the pudgy
white fingers that shake out the
intestines like a hankie.
In my dreams the snouts
drool on the marble, suffering
children, suffering flies, suffering
the consumers who won't meet their
steady eyes for fear they could see.
The boy who drives me along
believes that any moment
I'll fall on my side and drum my
toes like a typewriter or squeal
and shit like a new housewife
discovering television, or that I'll turn
like a beast cleverly to hook his teeth
with my teeth. No. Not this pig.
What Work Is
---------------------
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park.
For work.You know what work is--
if you're old enough to read this
you know what work is, although you
may not do it.Forget you. This is about
waiting, shifting from one foot
to another. Feeling the light rain
falling like mist into your hair,
blurring your vision until you think
you see your own brother ahead of you,
maybe ten places.You rub your glasses
with your fingers, and of course it's
someone else's brother, narrower across
the shoulders than yours but with the same
sad slouch, the grin that does not hide the
stubbornness,the sad refusal to give in to rain,
to the hours wasted waiting, to the knowledge
that somewhere ahead a man is waiting who will say,
"No,we're not hiring today," for any reason he wants.
You love your brother,now suddenly you can hardly
stand the love flooding you for your brother,who's
not beside you or behind or ahead because he's
home trying to sleep off a miserable night shift at
Cadillac so he can get up before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing Wagner,
the opera you hate most, the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him you loved him,
held his wide shoulders,opened your eyes wide and
said those words,and maybe kissed his cheek?
You've never done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you're too young or too dumb, not because
you're jealous or even mean or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,just because you don't
know what work is.
Phillip Levine a Biography
Philip Levine ( January 10, 1928, Detroit, Michigan) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet. He taught for many years at California State University, Fresno. More recently he is the Distinguished Poet in Residence for the Creative Writing Program at New York University.
Levine grew up in industrial Detroit. The familial, social, and economic world of 20th century Detroit is one of the major subjects of his life's work. His portraits of working class Americans and his continuous examination of his Jewish immigrant inheritance (both based on real life and described through fictional characters) has left a monumental testimony of mid-20th century American life. It can be best found in books such as "They Feed the Lion," the National Book Award-winning "What Work Is," "A Walk with Tom Jefferson," and in his "New Selected Poems." Growing up, Levine faced the anti-Semitism embodied by a local celebrity, the pro-Hitler radio priest Father Coughlin.
Levine began to write poetry while he was going to night school at Wayne University (now Wayne State University) in Detroit and working days at one of that city's automobile manufacturing plants. Levine's working experience lent his poetry a profound skepticism in regard to conventional American ideals. In his first two books, On the Edge (1963) and Not This Pig (1968), the poetry dwells on those who suddenly become aware they are trapped in some murderous processes not of their own making.
In his first two books, Levine was somewhat traditional in form and relatively constrained in expression. Beginning with They Feed They Lion, Levine's poems are typically free-verse monologues tending toward trimeter or tetrameter. The music of Levine's poetry depends on tension between his line-breaks and his syntax. The title poem of Levine's book 1933 (1974) is a good example of the cascade of clauses and phrases one finds in his poetry.
On November 29, 2007 a tribute was held in New York City in anticipation of Levine's 80th birthday. Among those celebrating Levine's career by reading Levine's work were Yusef Komunyakaa, Galway Kinnell, E. L. Doctorow, Charles Wright, Jean Valentine, and Sharon Olds. Levine himself read several new poems. He thanked his students and asked them to refrain from asking for any more letters of recommendation.
Awards Won-
1995 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry - The Simple Truth"
1991 National Book Award - What Work Is
1979 National Book Critics Circle Award Ashes: Poems New and Old
1979 American Book Award for Poetry - Ashes: Poems New and Old
1979 National Book Critics Circle Award - 7 Years from Somewhere
1975 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize "The Names of the Lost"
1987 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize from Poetry
Frank O'Hara Prize
Two Guggenheim Foundation fellowships
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