Quotes by Philip Levine

Philip Levine

Back then, I couldn’t have left a poem a year and gone back to it.

Gone

Left

Years

But I’m too old to be written about as a young poet.

Poet

Written

Young

But most commonly, it’s one poem that I work on with a lot of intensity.

Intensity

Corruption is subtle, just like the Bible said. Many young poets have come to me and asked, How am I gonna make it? They feel, and often with considerable justice, that they are being overlooked while others with less talent are out there making careers for themselves. I always give the same advice. I say, Do it the hard way, and you’ll always feel good about yourself. You write because you have to, and you get this unbelievable satisfaction from doing it well. Try to live on that as long as you’re able.

Careers

Long

Writing

For sure I once thought of myself as the poet who would save the ordinary from oblivion.

Oblivion

Ordinary

Sea

How weightless/ words are when nothing will do.

I believed even then that if I could transform my experience into poetry I would give it the value and dignity it did not begin to possess on its own. I thought too that if I could write about it I could come to understand it; I believed that if I could understand my life—or at least the part my work played in it—I could embrace it with some degree of joy, an element conspicuously missing from my life.

Giving

Joy

Writing

I find you in these tears, few, useless and here at last. Don’t come back.

Lasts

Tears

Useless

I have a sense that many Americans, especially those like me with European or foreign parents, feel they have to invent their families just as they have to invent themselves.

Feels

Like Me

Parent

I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong.

Hours

Jazz

Three

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Advice

Alive

Ambition

Believe

Best Poetry

Careers

Causes

Conscious

Country

Dark

Destiny

Detroit

Dramatic

Elegance

Facts

Father

Feels

Given

Giving

Going To Work

Gone

Grew

Havens

Home

Hours

Hype

Imagine

Intensity

Ironic

Irony

Jazz

Joy

Lasts

Left

Like Me

Listening

Long

Looks

Lucky

Memories

Mercy

Mother

Naked

Notion

Novelists

Oblivion

Ordinary

Parent

People

Poet

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Quotes by Philip Levine

Philip Levine

Back then, I couldn’t have left a poem a year and gone back to it.

But I’m too old to be written about as a young poet.

But most commonly, it’s one poem that I work on with a lot of intensity.

For sure I once thought of myself as the poet who would save the ordinary from oblivion.

How weightless/ words are when nothing will do.

I find you in these tears, few, useless and here at last. Don’t come back.

I have a sense that many Americans, especially those like me with European or foreign parents, feel they have to invent their families just as they have to invent themselves.

I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong.

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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