Customer Reviews

Breath: Poems

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Philip Levine does not have the recognition he deserves as the foremost poet in America writing in English. True, he has plenty of fine critics who praise him as they should, but his work somehow should be on everyone's lips more than it is. Breath has him still doing it like no one else. He elevates and makes elegiac the life of the working person - the life of maybe not everyone, but you and I.

I need to tell you about my relationship with Levine's poems. When I first read Levine's "Burned" (later to appear in What Work Is), it gave me a nightmare about my father that both terrified me and made me love my Father like I never had before. In fact, I made it back to Baltimore in time to plant a kiss on his dieing forehead, and I often think about that poem when I think about that moment.
It is true that I arranged Bukowski's second public reading ever and had it video-taped (as reported in the Chicago newspaper review of the video recording, Bukowski at Bellevue). Appearing in Hank's short story made his work play a part in my life, but nothing like Levine's work. His new book has poems that have the same kinds of power. They are about naming when naming is, in the words of the poems, "not enough". Philip Levine's words will always be with us. You do not have to go as far as I do and snap up a new book by him without even looking inside. However, you owe it to you or your soul to read Breath.

Carl Waluconis

Two year ago this was a present for my birthday.
This summer in my reading I re-read the slim volume. It takes me many readings of poetry sometimes to even like it, or connect to it, or re-welcome it back into thought.
In a way this book functioned this way. For one thing if I tell you when you are distracted a story say about a person I loved deeply, say Freda perhaps you might listen. Maybe. She was older, neighbor, shaped my life but I have to have an ability to build her before your eyes. And I have to discern things like her azaleas, her regalness, to catch her and catch you. Then I have to hope you are listening. Simple I suppose. I think if I repeat to you stories of her, or repeat that story eventually if we are talking, if we care, if I can hold your attentions then you come to a place where a little that honor I have of her maybe takes on a little place for you. Or it might. Or it might trigger a similar memory of your Freda. We have the halls of memory open to pass within.

So this book walks me there. Many times over I've read this noticing I did my hearing within a different poem. Today what caught me wasn't what I noticed yesterday. Sometimes I was impatient or unable to follow, other times held by this great phrase or image. Or person poured out. But it is true that I do see the pieces as speaking back over a life, like we might in intimate conversation wish to be heard, talking to figures ordinary, extrodinary. I think it's a book with a heartbeat.

There are poems I really like here.

My daughter's ill with Mono, I'm returning to teaching, I feel the sting of certain things sometimes not immune to points even on a silly site like this that raise and plummet thousands over nothing I can figure, not immune to friends that friend and those whose silence grows, aware of critical comment within critical comment within failings. But given that diving board I still leap off vainly into offering up words and thoughts, suggestions and creative attempts to catch and frame and draw attention to books or things I like. Rather funny if you do so in the dark or to a chorus of distrust. Still...I like Breath. I think if you struggle with older poets, self reflection, with thinking another's life and experience have worth, if you don't like backwards glancing, memory, memorials, the shifts of memory this might not be for you, no.

I liked this poem.
Home For The Holidays

Does anyone give a sh/t? Not
I said the little brown mouse
And so to bed, said Mother,
but no one was listening.
Praise the Lord, said the radio,
the radio said Praise the Lord
again, and the television
turned its back on the room.

Turnips for wisdom, eggplant
for beauty, parsnips for ease,
cabbage for size, a raw egg
for the hair, a slice of ham
to seize the hips, for the nose
foxglove and salt, for grace
ice-cold water poured from
way high up to way down low.

Everyone sits at the big table
in the dark. The empty plates
moon, the silverware stars,
the napkins scrub their hands.
I'm home, says the front door.
The windows are deep in thought,
the roof has taken off its hat.
Nothing to do, chants the toilet.
from page 34

I personally like the ice-water scene.
It was the beginning of an interesting conversation, this book, one we are still having.

I have admired Mr. Levine's work for years, have been to numerous readings. Perhaps only Wright and Dickey match his ability to turn the lyrical moment from the straight-ahead narrative. But I must be honest and write that he has, especially since "The Simple Truth," been turning the same styllistic moves and strategies over and over, to the point that his poetry has become a character sketch of the poet rather than the poet's illumination of his world. How many poems, for instance, must begin or be moved by adverb phrases? How many poems about the same subject matter? (Sharon Olds fell victim to the repetative theme about 10 years ago)

read it it says everything there is to say about living in these gritty magnificent times and ever so gently and straight foreward to boot

This is a wonderful book for readers of Philip Levine, who will find him here grappling with twilight themes and his own relationship to the legacy of romantic poetry, alongside more poems about working-class Americans which he is famous for. "Call It Music" and "Our Reds" are Levine at his best, and "Call It Music" is a good entry point also for those new to his work. Nevertheless, if you have not read Levine before, start with his book: "What Work Is" or "A Walk With Tom Jefferson," then maybe proceed to sip and appreciate "Breath" even more.