Worker — Image by kenne
Hwy 9 is the major road providing access to Zion National Park. — Image by kenne
The Return: Orihuela, 1965
You come over a slight rise
in the narrow, winding road
and the white village broods
in the valley below. A breeze
silvers the cold leaves
of the olives, just as you knew
it would or as you saw
it in dreams. How many days
have you waited for this day?
Soon you must face a son grown
to manhood, a wife to old age,
the tiny sealed house of memory.
A lone crow drops into the sun,
the fields whisper their courage.
— Philip Levine
Photo-Project In Zion National Park — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Morning Shadows In The Sonoran Desert — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Yes, the sun has risen again.
I can see the windows change and hear a dog barking.
The wind buckles the slender top of the alder,
the conversation of night birds hushes,
and I can hear my heart regular and strong.
I will live to see the day end as I lived to see
the earth turn molten and white, then to metal,
then to whatever shape we stamped into it
as we laughed the long night hours away
or sang how the eagle flies on Friday.
When Friday came, the early hours perfect
and cold, we cursed our only lives
and passed the bottle back and forth.
— from One Day by Philip Levine
Swallowtail Butterfly — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— from Magpiety by Philip Levine
12th Man — Photo-Artistry by kenne
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.
— from the poem, The Simple Truth by Philip Levine
Seed Pods — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“The lake around them changed its name.
Today it’s no more than a pond I walk around
each autumn looking for messages among
the fallen acorns and beer cans left by teenagers.
Another engine fires, the air rings with each precise explosion,
and each image vanishes into photography.”
— from “Photography” by Philip Levine
Computer Painting by kenne
— from One Day by Philip Levine
Grunge Art by kenne
— from Llanto by Philip Levine
Philip Levine — Image by kenne
Writers In Performance Series, Mid-1990’s — Images by Nancy Parsons
Voice of the Voiceless
Life,
life is simple,
we make it complicated —
that’s the simple truth.
Today,
I found myself reading
the poems of Philip Levine —
blessed with the gifts
of listening and observing;
enabling him to care,
he has called the
“voice of the voiceless”.
Above all,
Levine is a story-teller
of people decaying
in the spoils of the rich,
speaking directly
from the front lines,
bearing witness to
worker revolutions, faded.
By writing about work,
Levine writes about life.
Waiting,
waiting in the work line.
Waiting,
waiting in the assembly line.
Waiting,
waiting for the next task —
not changed from the last.
I, too,
worked an assembly line.
I, too,
bless the imagination
that have given me
myths I live by —
images created by
my visionary power
to bear witness.
I, too,
sing America —
that’s the simple truth.
— kenne
p. s. The other day I was listening to NPR when I heard that Philip Levine added another award to the many this great American poet has received, the American Academy of Poets life-time achievement award (Wallace Stevens Award). Levine, the 2011 U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner for his book, “The Simple Truth” is one of my favorite living poets. It was not long after this book’s publication that we were honored to have Levine read at Long Star College – Montgomery, Writers In Performance Series.
Laureate Philip Levine, Working Class Poet
by Robin Bates
An Abandoned Factory, Detroit
by Philip Levine
The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands,
An iron authority against the snow,
And this grey monument to common sense
Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands,
Of protest, men in league, and of the slow
Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence.
Beyond, through broken windows one can see
Where the great presses paused between their strokes
And thus remain, in air suspended, caught
In the sure margin of eternity.
The cast-iron wheels have stopped; one counts the spokes
Which movement blurred, the struts inertia fought,
And estimates the loss of human power,
Experienced and slow, the loss of years,
The gradual decay of dignity.
Men lived within these foundries, hour by hour;
Nothing they forged outlived the rusted gears
Which might have served to grind their eulogy.
![Strawberry field forewer [Explore 2023-05-30 #1]](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52938290739_54fc88d448_s.jpg "Strawberry field forewer [Explore 2023-05-30 #1]")
Becoming is Superior to Being 