It is an impressive moment: Philip Levine has just published his twentieth collection of poetry. Or his seventeenth collection, as the press materials and the dust jacket of News of the World seem to disagree. (My independent count of Levine's books comes to twenty, after all).
Regardless, I was glad to have News of the World arrive on my doorstep the other day. Levine, of course, is the Detroit native who has won a Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Awards and said that it was his time working in the city's auto plants in the 1950's that turned him to verse.
Indeed, this seems evident as a substantial part of this new collection is set in Detroit; the final poem of the collection, "Magic," is located at the famous/infamous Michigan Central train station, "which was once the scene of my enlightenment," says the poem's narrator; where the stars are "icy and pure" and where exotic animals are traveling through on first-class journeys to somewhere else.
News of the World also moves through Barcelona, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Andorra and beyond.
"An Extraordinary Morning" appears both in this collection and in the July/August issue of Poetry Magazine.
An Extraordinary Morning
By Philip Levine
Two young men—you just might call them boys—
waiting for the Woodward streetcar to get
them downtown. Yes, they’re tired, they’re also
dirty, and happy. Happy because they’ve
finished a short work week and if they’re not rich
they’re as close to rich as they’ll ever be
in this town. Are they truly brothers?
You could ask the husky one, the one
in the black jacket he fills to bursting;
he seems friendly enough, snapping
his fingers while he shakes his ass and sings
“Sweet Lorraine,” or if you’re put off
by his mocking tone ask the one leaning
against the locked door of Ruby’s Rib Shack,
the one whose eyelids flutter in time
with nothing. Tell him it’s crucial to know
if in truth this is brotherly love. He won’t
get angry, he’s too tired for anger,
too relieved to be here, he won’t even laugh
though he’ll find you silly. It’s Thursday,
maybe a holy day somewhere else, maybe
the Sabbath, but these two, neither devout
nor cynical, have no idea how to worship
except by doing what they’re doing,
singing a song about a woman they love
merely for her name, breathing in and out
the used and soiled air they wouldn’t know
how to live without, and by filling
the twin bodies they’ve disguised as filth.
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