Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Forward 50 2011

Philip Levine

Image by Geoffrey Berliner

On August 10, Philip Levine became the latest in a long line of Jewish poets — from Karl Shapiro in 1946 to Robert Pinsky in 1997 — to be named poet laureate of the United States.

At 83, Levine is one of the oldest writers to take up the post and, despite having won most of the honors American poetry has to offer, his work remains humble. Though he lives in Fresno, Calif., where he taught for several decades for the state university, and though he has spent recent years in New York City, Levine was born in Detroit to Russian Jewish immigrant parents and he has long identified with the blue-collar workers among whom he worked.

In naming Levine as the Library of Congress’ 18th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, said: “It’s marvelous to see parts of automobiles and other things in Detroit turned into a story that is partly mythological… but based on very ordinary things that we all use and depend on.”

The laureateship is Levine’s latest accolade. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for “The Simple Truth,” National Book Awards in 1980 for “Ashes: Poems New and Old” and in 1991 for “What Work Is,” the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 1977 for “The Names of the Lost,” the Frank O’Hara Prize and Guggenheim Foundation fellowships in 1973 and 1980.

As Robert Casper, head of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, put it, “He could’ve been poet laureate 20 years ago.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.