#title Philip Levine #subtitle An anarchist is America’s Poet Laureate #author Fifth Estate Collective #SORTauthors Fifth Estate Collective; #date 2011 #source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/385-fall-2011/philip-levine]] #lang en #pubdate 2013-11-07 #notes Fifth Estate #385, Fall, 2011 [[3-f-fe-385-33-philip-levine-228x300.jpg]] Detroit-born and raised, and self-described anarchist, Philip Levine was named the U.S. Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress in August. The post, whose task entails raising “the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry,” may take on a different than usual dimension during Levine’s tenure given his politics. Levine’s many poetry books are flying off bookstore shelves, in which readers will encounter poems about working class Detroit where Levine worked building transmissions at a Cadillac plant, plus others about anarchists in Spain such as the one on this page. In interviews, Levine talks about being drawn towards anarchism because of an affinity with the Spanish Revolution. He has written about modern Spanish poets such as Antonio Machado and Garcia Lorca, but also anti-fascist anarchist militia leaders like Buenaventura Durruti and Francisco Ascaso. The post of laureate, which runs only from October to May, is mostly ceremonial but draws public attention to the author’s work. The designate is chosen by the Library through consultation, in part, with the current laureate, who was W. S. Merwin, an engaged Buddhist and 1960s anti-war activist. In describing his works, which earlier were often “gritty, hard-nosed evocations of the lives of working people and their neighborhoods,” Levine says his poems have softened somewhat. He told The New York Times, “I find more energy in my earlier work. More dash, more anger. Anger was a major engine in my poetry then. It’s been replaced by irony, I guess, and by love.” Levine, now 83, has numerous books in print. His volume, The Simple Truth, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. *** On the Murder of Lieutenant Jose Del Castillo By the Falangist Bravo Martinez, July 12, 1936 When the Lieutenant of the Guardia de Asalto heard the automatic go off, he turned and took the second shot just above the sternum, the third tore away the right shoulder of his uniform, the fourth perforated his cheek. As he slid out of his comrade’s hold toward the gray cement of the Ramblas he lost count and knew only that he would not die and that the blue sky smudged with clouds was not heaven for heaven was nowhere and in his eyes slowly filling with their own light. The pigeons that spotted the cold floor of Barcelona rose as he sank below the waves of silence crashing on the far shores of his legs, growing faint and watery. His hands opened a last time to receive the benedictions of automobile exhaust and rain and the rain of soot. His mouth, that would never again say “I am afraid,” closed on nothing. The old grandfather hawking daisies at his stand pressed a handkerchief against his lips and turned his eyes away before they held the eyes of a gunman. The shepherd dogs on sale howled in their cages and turned in circles. There is more to be said, but by someone who has suffered and died for his sister the earth and his brothers the beasts and the trees. The Lieutenant can hear it, the prayer that comes on the voices of water, today or yesterday, from Chicago or Valladolid, and hands like smoke above this street he won’t walk as a man ever again. *** What do you mean when you say you’re an anarchist? If you’re going to allow people to make all the important choices about their lives you’re going to be relying on them to make decent choices. If people are going to make unwise and disgusting choices that tyrannize their brothers and sisters, then they have violated a profound anarchist tenet: you don’t tyrannize other people. In accepting your own freedom you have to grant others theirs. One basis of anarchism is the appalling confidence people will act decently. -- Philip Levine, from an interview with David Remnick (Michigan Quarterly Review [1980]).