Philip Levine -- What Work Is

The following is a link to a page with both and audio and text version of a poem. 

http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/levine/what_work_is.php

 It is written and spoken by Philip Levine former Poet Laureate.  He is among my favorite poets, and early on in my reading career, at least poetry, I read a poem he had written about his experiences in Detroit when it was a thriving, if not cruel, industrial city.

His poems voice is direct.  No cleverness.  And if there is irony, it isn't frivolous or merely clever.  His poems matter and acknowledge injustice.  "Most of the time," he writes, "a lot of people have to suck it up.  And many who think they are sucking it up have no idea how much worse others suffer." 

I like this poem for its search for fundamental truths.  I like it for its lack of distractions.  I like it for acknowledging the maliciousness and indifference that is part of most people's everyday existence.  And I like it for, in the end, his turning of what we think of as "work." 

Follow the link for both print version and an audio version that he, himself, read.'