Customer Reviews

News of the World: Poems

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Philip Levine isn't published over here in the UK. If it weren't for a spell in Boston fifteen years ago I would never have come across him, and if it weren't for Amazon I wouldn't now be able to keep up with his new books as they come out. If this volume ever does appear in the UK it will probably have to be with a different title, otherwise it will share the name of one of the UK's least poetic tabloids. But I hope that won't put off UK readers who stumble across it in the meanwhile. Levine is a wonderful writer, and this is his best book since The Simple Truth. Levine writes better elegies than anyone else in English. Unlike too many modern poets, Levine writes poems that are as clear as running water, and just as refreshing. He writes with grace and elegance about ordinary people in ordinary as well as extraordinary situations. More than with his previous books,the poems in this volume echo and reflect each other and create an aggregate that is greater than the sum of the books parts. There isn't a weak poem in this book, and if you are a dipper then you can dip anywhere here - but read through from beginning to end the book provides an extraordinary cumulative experience - moving, honest, insightful, reflective, humane. Lastly, the book (mine is the first printing) is exceptionally well produced on lovely, creamy, textured paper. It makes such a difference.

Philip Levine's News of the World: Poems takes the reader on a journey back in time. We are transported to the adventures of youth and are shown the trials that one faces in undertaking the journey to manhood. Levine's writing pulls us in, weaving together history, family, and tragedy in a way that is at once straightforward and poignant. While several decades have passed since World War II, words and raw emotion bring it to the present. As he reflects on events that transpired in Manhattan, Detroit, Philadelphia, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Spain, and introduces us to Dutch doctors and Cuban cabdrivers, there is a theme of maturity and independence; of life experiences that bring unexpected pleasures and unwanted pain; of lost innocence. While the events take place in nations around the world, the pages bring awareness to the shed blood of strangers and the shared blood of brothers, ever uniting.