Breath: Poems
- ISBN-10
- 0307514900
- ISBN-13
- 9780307514905
- Series
- Breath
- Category
- Poetry
- Pages
- 96
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2011-09-07
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Author
- Philip Levine
Description
Always a poet of memory and invention, Philip Levine looks back at his own life as well as the adventures of his ancestors, his relatives, and his friends, and at their rites of passage into an America of victories and betrayals. He transports us back to the street where he was born “early in the final industrial century” to help us envision an America he’s known from the 1930s to the present. His subjects include his brothers, a great-uncle who gave up on America and returned to czarist Russia, a father who survived unspeakable losses, the artists and musicians who inspired him, and fellow workers at the factory who shared the best and worst of his coming of age. Throughout the collection Levine rejoices in song–Dinah Washington wailing from a jukebox in midtown Manhattan; Della Daubien hymning on the crosstown streetcar; Max Roach and Clifford Brown at a forgotten Detroit jazz palace; the prayers offered to God by an immigrant uncle dreaming of the Judean hills; the hoarse notes of a factory worker who, completing another late shift, serenades the sleeping streets. Like all of Levine’s poems, these are a testament to the durability of love, the strength of the human spirit, the persistence of life in the presence of the coming dark.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2010-07-01
- 369 pages
- Ebook
- Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Similar books
-
Penguin's Poems for Life
By Laura Barber... Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, ... A Noiseless Patient Spider A noiseless patient spider, I mark'd where on a ...
-
Penguin's Poems by Heart
By Laura BarberAn anthology of some of the best English poems.
-
Scales of the Dragon
By James TimberlakeCombining journal entries, poetry and formal e-mails, these books celebrate the sights, sounds, flavors, (and the physical and mental strain), of crossing mountains, rolling landscapes, and unchanged rural villages, as well as vibrant ...
-
Upon This Stoney Holy Year
By James TimberlakeThere are no Formal E-mails, no Definitions, no Autobiography or Research here. And because of all that it is not, this book completes those first two in the pilgrimage series in a gentle way.
-
Heaven Is My Real Home: Volume 1
By Karen FreemanKaren Freeman! Was born August 22, 1950 in Newark New Jersey. She had a “BRIGHT” daughter named Kira. She Married Warren W. C. Freeman March 1, 1998. They were married for 13 years and 20 days. She “PASSED-ON” March 21, 2011.
-
Battle Dress: Poems
By Karen SkolfieldWinner of the Massachusetts Book Award "A terrific and sometimes terrifying collection—morally complex, rhythmic, tough-minded, and original." —Rosanna Warren, 2018 Barnard Women Poets Prize citation In a poetic voice at once accessible ...
-
Glossator 9: Pearl
By Karl Steel, David Coley, Daniel RemeinO. D. Macrae Gibson points out that the function of pyȝt as a concatenating word stresses its capacity to mean both arrayed and set.8 Gordon glosses the word as varying in sense throughout the poem between “set,” “fixed,” and “adorned” ...
-
The Truth
By Karen Michelle ThompsonThis riveting poetry collection is a fresh and witty account of thoughts and experiences that everyday people have in their day-to-day lives.
-
Heart on Fire
By Karen Teich ClusterSELL. IT. SOMEWHERE. ELSE. Well, you can take your good looks somewhere else Cuz they're not for sale 'round here... I've heard about you and the things you do And I don't need you anywhere near. Yeah, I've met your kind a time or two ...
-
Lerna, a Preclassical Site in the Argolid: Results of Excavations Conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens
By American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Jeremy B. Rutter, Elizabeth BanksI was indeed fortunate in being able to recruit a pair of talented , conscientious , and unfailingly cheerful draftsmen in the persons of Julie Baker and Kathi Donahue ( now Sherwood ) to collaborate with my wife , Sally , in producing ...