What Work Is

What Work Is

Paperback U.S. edition
Author	Philip Levine
Language	English
Genre	Poetry
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	1991
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	77 pp (first edition, hardcover)
ISBN	0-679-40166-0

What Work Is is a collection of American poetry by Philip Levine. It was first published in 1991 by Alfred A. Knoff, Inc. in New York. This poetry collection won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1991. After Levine was named Poet Laureate, What Work Is graced the top of Amazon.com's "Movers and Shakers" list. The collection has many themes that are representative of Levine's other work including physical labor, class identity, family relationships and personal loss. Its primary focus on work and the working class lead to it being a text studied with emphasis on Marxist literary criticism.

"I 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 life—or at least the part my work played in it—I could embrace it with some degree of joy, an element conspicuously missing from my life."

Philip Levine

Background

According to Edward Hirsch of the New York Times Book Review, Philip Levine is one of the elder statesmen of contemporary American poetry. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Levine was born and raised in industrial Detroit, which may account for his iconic labeling of Levine as "a large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland." As a young boy in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s, Levine was fascinated by the events of the Spanish Civil War. His heroes were not only those individuals who struggled against fascism but also ordinary folks who worked at hopeless jobs simply to stave off poverty.

Noted for his interest in the grim reality of blue-collar work and workers, Levine resolved "to find a voice for the voiceless" while working in the auto plants of Detroit during the 1950s. "I saw that the people that I was working with...were voiceless in a way," he explained in Detroit Magazine. "In terms of the literature of the United States they weren’t being heard. Nobody was speaking for them. And as young people will, you know, I took this foolish vow that I would speak for them and that’s what my life would be. And sure enough I’ve gone and done it. Or I’ve tried anyway..."

When the collection What Work Is was first released, unemployment was the highest it had been in nearly seven years. The Persian Gulf War had started and ended quickly, yet the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had caused the 1990 oil price shock which created a mild recession. Furthermore, when this mild recession combined with Reaganomics, many steel mills and factories were forced to close in the Rust Belt. This situation creates some of the atmosphere that surrounds the reception of Levine's poems, and further illustrates the clash between modern Detroit versus the Detroit of his youth. The environment during time of publication reflects these issues of recession and war, and are therefore two major themes that require consideration in context.

Themes

This collection amounts to a hymn of praise for all the workers of America. These proletarian heroes, with names like Lonnie, Loo, Sweet Pea, and Packy, work the furnaces, forges, slag heaps, assembly lines, and loading docks at places with unglamorous names like Brass Craft or Feinberg and Breslin’s First-Rate Plumbing and Plating. Levine's characters are also significant for their inner lives, not merely their jobs. They are unusually artistic, living 'at the borders of dreams.' One reads The Tempest ‘slowly to himself’; another ponders a diagonal chalk line drawn by his teacher to suggest a triangle, the roof of a barn, or the mysterious separation of ‘the dark from the dark.’ What Work Is is very accessible and utterly American in tone and language.

Mr. Levine’s poems aren’t lachrymose; they don’t present blue-collar caricatures. Yet he speaks for people who are rarely given a voice in our poetry, and his poems feel, crucially, populated. Although, Levine does write about a variety of topics in his verse (as a writer of any particular value surely would), secondary sources on his poetry more often than not associate Levine with working class elements. The tenacity with which Levine’s elements of work are noted makes it essential to understand his place within the tradition of working class poetry. Love also is a major theme for Levine in this collection. "What Work Is" is a poem primarily written for his brother, and the difficulty of expressing that love. Often enough the theme of love is expressed in a subdued way and is shadowing the bolder themes most largely associated with work. The poems feature different types of work, some of which reflect the actual work experience of the author. For instance, the poems "Fear and Fame" and "Growth" are direct accounts of two of Levine's jobs as a young man. "Fear and Fame" is based on a job Levine had cleaning out and refilling acid vats in his mid twenties. "Growth" is about the job Levine held at a soap factory at the age of fourteen. Many of Levine's poems are based on his experience growing up in Detroit. The titular poem, "What Work Is", is based on Levine's experience of waiting in a Detroit employment line. "The Right Cross" is related to a boxing teacher who taught Levine to defend himself while growing up in Detroit.

Style

Levine’s poetry for and about the common man is distinguished by simple diction and a rhythmic narrative style—by what Robert Pinsky once called “the strength of a living syntax.” In an American Poetry Review appraisal of Ashes (1979) and 7 Years from Somewhere (1979), contributor Dave Smith noted that in Levine’s poems “the language, the figures of speech, the narrative progressions are never so obscure, so truncated as to forbid less sophisticated readers. Though he takes on the largest subjects of death, love, courage, manhood, loyalty…he brings the mysteries of existence down into the ordinarily inarticulate events and objects of daily life.” Because Levine values reality above all in his poetry, his language is often earthy and direct, his syntax colloquial and his rhythms relaxed. Molesworth argued that Levine’s work reflects a mistrust of language; rather than compressing multiple meanings into individual words and phrases as in traditionally conceived poetry, Levine’s simple narratives work to reflect the concrete and matter-of-fact speech patterns of working people. Levine’s work is typically more concerned with the known, visible world than with his own perception of those phenomena, and this makes it somewhat unique in the world of contemporary poetry. Levine himself, in an interview with Calvin Bedient for Parnassus, defined his “ideal poem” as one in which “no words are noticed. You look through them into a vision of…the people, the place.”

Analysis

Much of the work done on Levine's Poetry is Marxist literary criticism. Because the subject matter and Levine's focus on work, Marxist Criticism seems to be the most fitting. Rumiano proposes a Marxist reading of much of Levine's work in a Dissertation. Rumiano analyzes many of Levine's poems and work in a Marxist manner as it relates to the working class characters that appear in Levine's poetry.

"What Work Is"

According to Rumiano, in this poem Levine defines and expresses the struggles between the working class and the upper middle class. Two different aspects of the poem support and define this struggle. Firstly the narrator's is at home recovering after a hard night of labor. This means that the brother can not find time to practice singing opera which is what he most wants to do. If he were a member of the upper class he would not have to expend himself at the cost of his education just to survive. It can be seen as one way the working-class upper-class struggle is defined. Secondly the narrator, who waits in line to see if he can get a job that day, is at the mercy of the upper-class manager who decides who can work or not. This represents the struggle between the two classes as well as the balance of power between the two.

Contemporary critics often label Levine a working class poet, describing his writing as working class verse. Levine’s poetry illustrates one of the most basic tenets of Marxist theory: that class antagonisms comprise all of human history.

"Growth"

This poem is about a job Levine had when he was a boy. The poem's narrator takes a retrospective look at his job at the soap factory. Rumiano states that the main issues and concerns in this poem are: the lack of communication, lack of a superior, and the hellish nature of the task that the narrator is performing and its effect upon him.

"Burned"

The volume is also notable for what is Levine's longest poem to date, a dreamlike meditation in 20 unnumbered sections of varying length, titled "Burned". Primarily a retrospective poem, its tone is not so much elegiac as contestatory. Levine leaves room not only for memory but also revery and speculative discourse, somewhat in the manner of Whitman's The Sleepers, as though the poet had spread a wide net to capture his most elusive thoughts and images. Some of these are filled with dark portents; indeed, the poem's conclusion offers no palliatives except the resolution that comes from accomplished art.

Critical reception

Because of its subject matter, critics have described Levine’s work as dark, brooding, and grim. Time contributor Paul Gray called Levine’s speakers “guerrillas, trapped in an endless battle long after the war is lost.” This sense of defeat is particularly strong when the poet recalls scenes from his Detroit childhood, where unemployment and violence colored his life. But despite its painful material, Levine’s verse can also display a certain joyfulness, suggested Marie Borroff.

Initial reviews for What Work Is praised Levine for his working-class subject matter, which represented a marked change from contemporary poets who wrote more about the domestic sphere. Levine's 1991 collection made an important digression from a trend of "meditation about a seemingly inconsequential comer of one's personal life" to the earnestness of work: "unglamorous, bluecollar, industrial, assembly-line work". Richard Hugo commented in the American Poetry Review: “Levine’s poems are important because in them we hear and we care.” Though Levine’s poems are full of loss, regret and inadequacy, Hugo felt that they also embody the triumphant potential of language and song. Levine has kept alive in himself “the impulse to sing,” Hugo concluded, adding that Levine “is destined to become one of the most celebrated poets of the time.”

Levine once referred to himself as “a dirty Detroit Jew with bad manners", and he has sometimes been criticized for leaning too hard on his blue-collar bona fides. The critic Adam Kirsch, writing in The Times Book Review in 1999, noted, accurately enough, that “in his autobiographical essays he goes out of his way to tell us that he is essentially a peasant.” Helen Vendler thought that this lack of traditional poetic devices makes Levine “simply a memoir-writer in prose who chops up his reminiscent paragraphs into short lines,” and asked in her New York Review of Books “Is there any compelling reason why it should be called poetry?” However, Thomas Hackett, in his Village Voice Literary Supplement, argued that, rather than being a weakness, Levine’s “strength is the declarative, practically journalistic sentence. He is most visual and precise when he roots his voice in hard, earthy nouns.”

Alfred Corn of The Washington Post observed that Levine's collection features a revised biographical note, now describing his Detroit years as 'a succession of industrial jobs', as opposed to 'a succession of stupid jobs,' indicating a changed perspective on them, noting that the opening poems are suffused by a chastened tone that contrasts with the sarcasm of some of the earlier poems. He further writes, "It didn't seem possible that Levine could improve on his first working-class portraits, yet I feel that these new poems are an improvement: An extra dimension of dignity has been conferred on his characters. We sense their conviction that there is nothing 'stupid' about the prospect of earning one's living, even in harsh and exploitative circumstances." Corn also claims that the poems 'Fear and Fame,' 'Coming Close,' 'Every Blessed Day,' and the title poem are "perhaps the most moving that Levine has written -- tender without being sentimental, calm but not lacking in passion, written in a diction as clear and lucid as spring water."

David Baker, writing about What Work Is (1991) in the Kenyon Review, said Levine has “one of our most resonant voices of social conviction and witness, and he speaks with a powerful clarity…What Work Is may be one of the most important books of poetry of our time. Poem after poem confronts the terribly damaged conditions of American labor, whose circumstance has perhaps never been more wrecked.”

Contents

I

• "Fear and Fame"
• "Coming Close"
• "Fire"
• "Every Blessed Day"
• "Growth"
• "Innocence"
• "Coming Home from the Post Office"
• "Among Children"
• "What Work Is"

II

• "Snails"
• "My Grave"
• "Agnus Dei"
• "Facts"
• "Gin"
• "Perennials"
• "Above the World"
• "M.Degas Teaches Art & Science at Durfee Intermediate School"

III

• "Burned"

IV

• "Soloing"
• "Scouting"
• "Coming of Age in Michigan"
• "The Right Cross"
• "The Sweetness of Bobby Hefka"
• "On the River"
• "The Seventh Summer"

External links

• New Poet Laureate Philip Levine's 'Absolute Truth' on NPR, [August 14, 2011] (audio)
• Nobody's Detroit in Harper's Magazine, [March 2010]
• Poetry Foundation Recorded Poetry Readings (audio)