Philip Levine is to be US Poet Laureate

[EastsideAl]

Couldn't happen to better poet or a better person. Phil and his brother went to jr. high school and high school with my mother on the west side, and he was at Wayne with both of my parents. Mom has kept in touch with him a bit over the years and has always bought his books and greatly enjoyed his poetry.

I've been fortunate enough to meet him a few times, and the phrase 'self-effacing' pretty much describes him to a tee. His brother, a fine writer, artist, and singer in his own right, ran an auto parts business over by Warren and Grand River for many years.

Even though Phil's lived in Fresno California for a long time now, he still writes often about a set of Detroit experiences that I think most of us would recognize. Here is a the last part of a poem about an old friend that he published a couple of years ago in a book that contains many poems about his recent return trips to the city.

"Arrival & Departure" [[excerpt)

There was snow here, too,
Speckled with cinders, piss yellowed, tired,
And the smell of iron and ashes blowing
In from Canada, and you and I waiting
For a streetcar that finally arrived,
Jammed with the refuse of the nightshift
At Plymouth Assembly.

I should have seen
Where we were headed; even at twenty
It was mine to know.

Like you I thought
2.35 an hour was money,
I thought we’d sign on for afternoons and harden
Into men. Wasn’t that the way it worked,
Men sold themselves to redeem their lives?
If there was an answer I didn’t get it.

Korea broke,
I took off for anywhere
Living where I could, one perfect season
In your mountains. The years passed,
Suddenly I was old and full of new needs.

When I went back to find you I found
Instead no one in the old neighborhood
Who knew who I was asking for, the Sure Shot
Had become a porno shop; the plating plant
On Trumbull had moved to Mexico
Or heaven.

In its space someone planted
Oiled grass, stripped-down cars, milkweeds
Shuddering in the traffic.

The river was here,
Still riding low and wrinkled toward a world
We never guessed was there, but still the same,
Like you, faithful to the end.

If your sister,
Widowed now, should call today and ask
One more time, “Where is he at?
I need him, He needs me,” what should I tell her?

He’s in the wind, he’s under someone’s
Boot-soles, he’s in the spring grass, he lives
In us as long as we live.

She won’t buy it,
Neither would you.
You’d light a cigarette,

Settle your great right hand behind my neck,
Bow down forehead to forehead, your black hair
Fallen across your eyes, and mutter something
Consequential, “bullshit” or “god a-mighty”
Or “the worst is still to come.”

You came north
To Detroit in winter.

What were you thinking?