New Selected Poems of Philip Levine

LIGHTS I HAVE SEEN BEFORE

The children are off somewhere
and when I waken
I hear only
the buzz of current
in the TV
and the refrigerator

groaning against the coming
day. I rise and wash;
there is nothing
to think of except
the insistent push
of water, and the pipe's

Autorentext

PHILIP LEVINE was born in 1928 in Detroit and was formally educated there, at the public schools and at Wayne University (now Wayne State University). After a succession of industrial jobs he left the city for good and lived in various parts of the country before settling in Fresno, California, where he taught at the University until his retirement. He has received many awards for his books of poems, including the National Book Award in 1991 for What Work Is, and the Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for The Simple Truth.