My earliest poems were a way of talking to somebody. I suppose to myself. — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
My mother carried on and supported us; her ambition had been to write poetry and songs. — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
But most commonly, it's one poem that I work on with a lot of intensity. — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry. — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
I was very lucky to have a mother who encouraged me to become a poet. — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
For sure I once thought of myself as the poet who would save the ordinary from oblivion. — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
My sense of a poem - my notion of how you revise - is: you get yourself into a state where what… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
I realized poetry's the thing that I can do 'cause I can stick at it and work with tremendous intensity. — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
Listen to these young poets and you'll discover the voice of the present and hear the voice of the future before the… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
I still believe in this country, that it can fulfill the destiny Blake and Whitman envisioned. I still believe in American poetry. — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
It's ironic that while I was a worker in Detroit, which I left when I was twenty six, my sense was that… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
If that voice that you created that is most alive in the poem isn't carried throughout the whole poem, then I destroy… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
I believed even then that if I could transform my experience into poetry I would give it the value and dignity it… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
You have to follow where the poem leads. And it will surprise you. It will say things you didn't expect to say.… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
“… the river sliding along its banks, darker now than the sky descending a last time to scatter its diamonds into these… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
“Poetry is like truth: on one level it simply is, and as such it is available to anyone. Anyone, that is, who… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
Corruption is subtle, just like the Bible said. Many young poets have come to me and asked, How am I gonna make… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
“ Our Valley We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August when the worst heat seems to rise… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
“ Gospel The new grass rising in the hills, the cows loitering in the morning chill, a dozen or more old browns… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory. — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
“ The Mercy The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island eighty-three years ago was named "The Mercy." She remembers trying… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
I find you in these tears, few, useless and here at last. Don't come back. — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
I'm afraid we live at the mercy of a power, maybe a God, without mercy. And yet we find it, as I have, from… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory. — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
But most commonly, it's one poem that I work on with a lot of intensity. — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
“He embodied what he worshipped, the exquisite in the commonplace…salt for the spirit.” — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
“As you know, Joyce was a writer who asked his reader to give him a lifetime,” he said. “I am that reader, and I… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
“Thirty years will pass before I remember that moment when suddenly I knew each man has one brother who dies when he sleeps and… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
“From they sack and they belly opened And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth They feed they Lion and he comes.” — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
Corruption is subtle, just like the Bible said. Many young poets have come to me and asked, How am I gonna make it? They… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
“ Our Valley We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August when the worst heat seems to rise from the… — Philip Levine Copy Share Image
