There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.
Philip LevineMy mother carried on and supported us; her ambition had been to write poetry and songs.
Philip LevineI believed even then that if I could transform my experience into poetry I would give it the value and dignity it did not begin to possess on its own. I thought too that if I could write about it I could come to understand it; I believed that if I could understand my lifeโor at least the part my work played in itโI could embrace it with some degree of joy, an element conspicuously missing from my life.
Philip LevineI say, Father, the years have brought me here, still your son, they have brought me to a life I cannot understand.
Philip Levine