As midterm season comes to a close on campus, Georgetown University students are all too familiar with the idea of work. However, unlike our next campus celebrity they probably were not inspired to write renowned works of poetry on the subject.
On Monday November 7th, a public event sponsored by Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor was held in Gaston Hall featuring a public reading by and discussion with the United States’ recently appointed Poet Laureate Philip Levine.
The Kalmanovitz Initiative hosted the Poet Laureate in conjunction with their Labor Lab series which seeks to explore the issues of labor through the perspective of various scholars, activists etc. The question at hand addressed what poetry could reveal about the nature of humanity at work, and how it can influence the way we approach implementation of policy to solve problems afflicting the working class. In particular the focus of the event highlighted how these struggles are magnified in light of an ever evolving and changing global landscape.
83-year-old Philip Levine is a Detroit native and graduate of Wayne State University and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. At a young age during the Great Depression, Levine began to work in the auto industry. His experiences in the labor force fueled his poetic voice.
Levine published his first collection of poems in 1963 and has since gone on to become a Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet whose works have inspired many about the experiences of leading a blue-collar life.
After reading several of his works from the collection What Work Is, Levine sat for an interview and a Q and A session with the audience.
Much of his poetry, characterized by simple diction, examines the complex human aspect of labor. During the interview, Levine mentioned that it is people that add a “real texture” to poetry. Through his works he said, he attempts to capture how humans individually make meaning in their lines of work. This came through particularly in one story he shared of a Spaniard worker whose body had been severely scarred from surviving the Spanish Civil War.
“I used to watch they way he worked and I watched the way he was able to bring dignity and a certain style to the way he did what he did. His movements were almost balletic. They were beautiful. I used to watch him and think to myself that this guy is preserving some sense of who he is by doing this work in this particular way. Now that is something I could never forget,” Levine said.
Levine also emphasized the passive process of writing poetry. “That’s the way poems come to be. They come to you. You are very passive as a poet,” Levine said. “Randall Jarrell described it as waiting outside in the rain to be hit be lightning. And a significant poet is one who gets hit 4 or 5 times.”
Ultimately Levine explained his new title as Poet Laureate as a way for him to reach larger audiences with his work. He described his sense of identity as a poet this way, “I’m not happy unless I’m doing this. That’s what I’m here for. I define my life in those terms. I’m a father, I’m a husband, and I’m a writer. That’s what I must do.”
To watch the webcast of the event go to http://www.georgetown.edu/webcast/us-poet-laureate.html
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