American - Poet | January 20, 1950 -
Throughout his work, Philip Levine's most powerful commitment has been to the failed and lost, the marginal, the unloved, the unwanted.
Edward Hirsch
WorkCommitmentPowerfulLostBeen
You are always trying to make something that is more than the sum of its parts.
TryingYouMoreAlwaysSomething
The sole literary presence from my childhood was my grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia, who eccentrically copied poems into the backs of his books. After he died, when I was 8 years old, my grandmother gave his books away, and his poems were lost.
ChildhoodLostGrandfatherImmigrant
Poetry is a vocation. It is not a career but a calling.
PoetryCareerVocationCalling
I'm a poet, and I spent my life in poetry.
LifePoetryMy LifePoetSpent
Poetry takes courage because you have to face things and you try to articulate how you feel.
CouragePoetryFaceFeelYouTry
As soon as something happens to us in America, everyone begins talking about healing. But before you heal, you have to mourn.
HealingAmericaTalkingYouEveryone
One of the things that happens to everyone who is grief-stricken, who has lost someone, is there comes a time when everyone else just wants you to get over it, but of course you don't get over it. You get stronger; you try and live on; you endure; you change; but you don't get over it. You carry it with you.
ChangeLiveTimeSomeoneStronger
I think ancient cultures incorporated death into the experience of life in a more natural way than we have done. In our obsessive focus on youth, on celebrity, our denial of death makes it harder for people who are grieving to find a place for that grief.
LifeGriefExperienceFocusDeath
Depression is a feeling without a cause. Mourning has a cause.
DepressionFeelingWithoutCause
Anyone who has lost a child will tell you that they don't recover their sense of endless possibility. Some people hide that well. But after a certain age, almost everyone is carrying something like that around, I suppose.
AgeChildPeopleYouHideLost
Someone who's awake in the middle of the night is a soul consciousness when everyone else is asleep, and that creates a feeling of solitude in poetry that I very much like.
SoulPoetrySolitudeNightSomeone
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