Caught somewhere in between his self-mentioned Fitzgerald and the Beat poets of his own time, Philip Levine writes plainly — and yet also reverentially — of the modern American landscape, in a style that echoes both poetic romanticism and prosaic clarity. From the dingy interiors of industrial factories, to the oddities of working- and middle-class life, to the idyllic untamed backwoods of "This Great Nation" (whatever that means), What Work Is runs the full gauntlet of 20th century literary hallmarks. Only occasionally does it fall short, favoring itself with a bit too much bland suburban white-picket-fence type description, as in "Above The World," which is all very nice except that it's just a little too Back in the good ol' days for my personal taste. Thankfully though, Philip Levine normally makes it quite easy to see what he's talking about.

In "Growth," the juxtaposition of health and stagnation is clearly suggested with his ironic depiction of the sordid conditions under which the nation's workforce labored, despite the flourishing World War II-era economy. The hygienic final product (i.e. soap... or, on the larger symbolic scale, the nation as a whole) stands in bizarre contrast to its grimy creators: the countless men "smelling of scared animal" that work endless hours in the service of enterprising businessmen, reduced by the nature of their job to an almost inhuman status. In rooms "the color of sick skin," one can imagine that same color on the faces of everyone who had to haul vats of grease in and out of raging fires for a living. And yet Levine balances out this dismal picture with the "fresh air of Detroit" and the optimism of a man in his "new life" of "working and earning." Though it is not particularly surprising at this point in our national history to have the paraxodes of the American capitalist machine revealed with such lucidity, the poem is nonetheless effective. (On a more practical level, the poem also raises the disturbing notion of gallons of hamburger-chain-store fatty runoff being converted into items to be used for personal cleanliness... hopefully this practice has now been banned by the proper authorities.)

Modern industrialism is not Levine's sole subject, of course. Though he approaches the factories with a neutral, almost ambivalent tone, his take on the youth of America in "Among Children" is unabashedly romanticized. This is where it gets to be just a bit too much. Though the language is beautiful and flows like a pure mountain creek on a clear winter day, it is perhaps a unique talent of everyone over the age of 50 to see children with such unadulterated sentimentality...and particularly among this collection of rather subdued poems, "Among Children" sticks out like a big enthusiastic sore thumb. He speaks nobly of arming them "with a quiver of arrows so that they might rush like wind where no battle rages" etceteras, which (while noble indeed) contrasts sharply to the work-weary tone he sets up in previous poems. Though it's tempered by the bookend descriptions of the children's present and future...both dreary...the gush of phrases like "burning with joy" and "damp head blurred with the hair of ponds" (do ponds have hair?) nearly overshadows the point that it seems Levine is trying to make: that in 10 and 20 years their lives will be industrialized, anonymized, a pale reflection of their initial childhood happiness. This point is well-taken, and it fits the general theme of the book, but its fervor and passion for these perfect, unsullied newborn babies seems a bit uncharacteristic, sandwiched in among all these other narratives of dirty, thankless labor, lost innocence and the corruptibility of youth. It's a good work in its own right, of course...yet something about its context in the collection as a whole just rubs me the wrong way.

A more familiar portrait of childhood emerges from the beleaguered "M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School." This is the sort of inescapable academic conundrum that most Americans really can relate to (as opposed to, say, the depiction of one's earlier years found in "Among Children," which seems... well, sort of silly to me). That longing gaze towards the clock's inexorable journey forward is an image burned indelibly upon the minds of anyone who had the (mis)fortune of attending our fine national schools, and Levine utilizes it skillfully in this poem. The overflowing sentimentality is gone, replaced with the matter-of-factness of the young boy he brings quite deftly to life. This is the kind of thing which makes What Work Is a successful collection of poetry, making up for those moments of anachronistic trips down memory lane that echo with the patronizing sound of When I was your age...

Such rememberings, of course, are not automatically bad. In most cases (such as the magnificent "Burned" which I could not even attempt to analyze here unless I was given four months and a stipend) his mixture of subtle language and vivid imagery evoke the more poignant parts of everyday mid-century life without depicting them in an archaic light. His use of nature in his poems, for instance, serves to ground the language, and put his writing in terms most readers are likely to recognize and relate to. But though his literary skill is established, one cannot avoid getting the feeling that they're being regaled by an old grandfather who's too focused on his tales of yore to go near a computer or a cell phone. I know I'm ageist, and that may make me a poor critic, but it's a feeling that emerged several times while reading his poems which made it difficult to focus on the real subject at hand — and, I believe, that subject was a noble one. But in the end, to me, his writings are much like the good old American lifestyle they emerged from: I can live with them, but could probably live without them too.

Philip Levine - What Work Is