Sweet Will

Philip Levine

Jul 2013 · University of Iowa Press

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Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Philip Levine published Sweet Will, his eleventh volume of poems, in 1985. His last book with Atheneum, it has been unavailable for many years. Because of its subdued and thoughtful nature, it was seen as a transitional book for Levine, one that presaged the tone of much that was to come. Peter Stitt, writing in the Kenyon Review, called it “the quietest book that Philip Levine has ever written,” concluding that “though the river that glides through it is still on the surface, the sweetness of its will runs deep indeed.” And Dave Smith, writing in Poetry, delighted in the poems of “emergent tenderness and faith,” and claimed that “linking himself to Wordsworth, who loved this world uncommonly in uncommon poetry, Philip Levine has lifted his moral tale to the level of joyful celebration.”
The poems in Sweet Will are set in Detroit, California, New York, Europe, and the country of memory. Their aim is to bring the overlooked events of daily life into a sharper focus that transcends the ordinary. At the time of its original publication, the book was seen as an attempt to bring together the themes and methods of Levine’s early, groundbreaking work: the anger of They Feed They Lion, the family concerns of 1933, the characters of The Names of the Lost, and the hopes of One for the Rose. Yet it is clearly a mid-career book composed by a poet who can begin to look back in tranquility at a tempestuous life.
The poems, including the long meditation of more than five hundred lines, “A Poem with No Ending,” are beautiful and essential. Restored to print, they will resonate with readers who love both the earlier and the later work of one of our most important poets.

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Philip Levine was born in Detroit, Michigan on January 10, 1928. Starting at the age of 14, he held a series of industrial jobs including working in a soap factory, hefting cases of soft drinks at a bottling plant, manning a punch press at Chevrolet Gear and Axle, and operating a jackhammer at Detroit Transmission. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in English from Wayne State University and a master of fine arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His first collection of poetry, On the Edge, was published in 1961. His other poetry collections included 1933, Not This Pig, They Feed They Lion, A Walk with Tom Jefferson, The Mercy, and Breath. He won numerous awards during his lifetime including the 1977 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for The Names of the Lost, the 1979 National Book Critics Circle Award for Ashes: Poems New and Old and 7 Years from Somewhere, the 1987 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for his body of work, the National Book Award for Ashes: Poems New and Old in 1980 and for What Work Is in 1991, and a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for The Simple Truth. He was appointed the Library of Congress 18th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry from 2011 to 2012. His poetry appeared in several publications including The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine. He also published a collection of autobiographical essays entitled Bread of Time and edited an anthology entitled The Essential Keats. He died of pancreatic cancer on February 14, 2015 at the age of 87.