A U.S. Poet Laureate died last weekend. Philip Levine, a Detroit native, was the 18th U.S. Poet Laureate. He was caught in the rain one day when his neighbor noticed him.
Michael Bourne tells the story and a bit more. “The anger that filled him in his early years was of no use to him as a writer, he told me. ‘It was a huge hindrance because it meant I couldn’t write anything worth a damn about that work life,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get that disinterestedness that’s often required. I couldn’t get Wordsworth’s tranquility. It took me until I was about 35 before I really wrote a poem that was about work.’”