thank you for that Andrew
KS
2008/9/21 andrew burke <[log in to unmask]>
> Given email's way of ruining the indent, here is one of my favourite
> Levine
> poems:
>
> *The Simple Truth*
>
> I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes,
> took them home, boiled them in their jackets
> and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
> Then I walked through the dried fields
> on the edge of town. In middle June the light
> hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,
> and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds
> were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers
> squawking back and forth, the finches still darting
> into the dusty light. The woman who sold me
> the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone
> out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses
> praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables
> at the road-side stand and urging me to taste
> even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way,
> she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat" she said,
> "Even if you don't I'll say you did."
> Some things
> you know all your life. They are so simple and true
> they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
> they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
> the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
> in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
> naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.
> My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965
> before I went away, before he began to kill himself,
> and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste
> what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch
> of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,
> it stays in the back of your throat like a truth
> you never uttered because the time was always wrong,
> it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,
> made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,
> in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.
>
> *Philip Levine*
>
>
>
> 2008/9/21 andrew burke <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > I too call Phillip Levine's work poetry. & of the highest order.
> >
> > Andrew
> >
> > 2008/9/21 Judy Prince <[log in to unmask]>
> >
> > Phillip Levine tends to write prose that's end-lined as if it were
> poetry.
> >> And he calls it poetry.
> >> _Question: What, then, makes poetry poetry and not
> >> chopped-off-at-a-slightly-shorter-line-length-than-prose, 'poetry'?_
> >>
> >> Assume first, of course, that the 'poet' exhibits all the
> characteristics,
> >> in her writing, of poetry, a few which are: rhythm, rhyme (if only
> >> internal), figures, of course, and alliteration. But the poet is really
> >> writing prose, as described above and exemplified in Levine's 'poetry'.
> >>
> >> Judy
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Andrew
> > http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
> > http://www.flickr.com/photos/aburke/
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Andrew
> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/aburke/
>
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