The Bread of Time: Toward an Autobiography [Hardcover]

Philip Levine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 18, 1994

Autobiographical essays written by the well-known poet discuss the route by which he became a poet and examines his relationship with his teachers and fellow poets. By the author of What Work Is.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This National Book Award-winning poet worked as a young man in Detroit's Chevrolet Gear and Axle factory with "a sense of utter weariness that descended each night from my neck to my shoulder" because he wanted to conserve his intellectual energy for his writing. Levine, according to his mother, "set out to prove there is social mobility in America . . . so he got born smack-dab in the middle of the middle class, grew up in the lower middle class, and then as adult joined the working class." Nine essays of varying lengths, collected from distinguished literary reviews, are loosely linked by autobiographical detail: stories of his poetic mentors, his travels to Spain, his wife and sons, his translations of Antonio Machado and his slow migration into the world of teaching. His portrait of John Berryman, with whom Levine studied at the University of Iowa Creative Writing Workshop, glows with affection: "He was the most brilliant, intense, articulate man I've ever met." More a gloss on the poet than an autobiography, these essays lack an emotional thread to bind them together. Despite the fluent and often elegant prose, their curiously slack, anecdotal tone leaves admirers of Levine's poetry dissatisfied.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Would that all autobiographical efforts were anywhere near this good. Shunning a literal retelling of his life, award-winning poet Levine has instead assembled a series of autobiographical essays not originally conceived together. The result is an elegant if tough-minded account of his struggles to leave behind the rough-and-ready world of lower-middle-class Detroit and become the first-class poet he is. From the affecting memoirs of two important mentors--John Berryman and Yvor Winters--to an account of his steadfast effort to crack the code of Spanish verse while living with his family in Spain, Levine manages to make clear his commitment to poetry and abiding leftist convictions while keeping readers completely entertained. Does it matter that in two essays he "takes such liberties with actual events that they could be regarded as fictions"? Not really; this is not a straightforward life for future scholars but, like all good poems, an imaginative rethinking of events that gets at a deeper truth. Highly recommended.
- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (January 18, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679424067
• ISBN-13: 978-0679424062
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,693,402 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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