83º ~ feels like 89º, dew point 74º, the swelter-weather returns, bubbling up to heat indices nearing the century mark later this week, no real rain, watering for the second weekend in a row, hummingbirds abound
This morning, the first thing I read was a Philip Levine poem, “Coming Close, the daily poem from The Academy of American Poets. I went on to read another Levine poem, “What Work Is,” archived by the Poetry Foundation. Both of these poems present the complicated lives of working-class people. Among Levine’s other poems there are more direct implications of what happens when one moves from the working class to the middle class, as I have done.
This set me off in writing a really cliched, too overt “political poem,” about my relationship to work. I mean, the draft is really terrible.
But, it got me thinking, how do political poets, and I count Levine as such, poets who comment directly on the conditions of the people with whom they are concerned, how do they do it? How do they honor their subject and make art of it? How do they avoid sentimentality? How do they avoid exploiting the very people they seek to honor? How do they move me without driving me away with points too blunt and too sharp?
If anyone has any answers, I’m all ears.
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In the meantime, I must engage in that domestic labor that is grocery shopping and laundry and catching up on bill paying on this glorious holiday that not everyone gets to enjoy. Many folks, especially in retail and food service will be hard at labor today. May they prosper.
I can't answer any of your questions, but I do want to say that Philip Levine was one of the first "real" poets I ever saw in person, when he gave a reading at my university when I was a sophomore. I still remember it vividly. Now when I encounter one of his poems in an anthology I kind of feel like I secretly know him. Silly, I know.
John, not silly at all. Thanks for taking the time to comment.