Philip Levine Quotes

Philip Levine
American Poet
Born: Jan 10, 1928
Died: Feb 14, 2015
Intensity Me Poet Sense Work You
Related authors: Edgar Allan Poe Emily Dickinson Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Maya Angelou Ralph Waldo Emerson Robert Frost T. S. Eliot Walt Whitman
I'm saying look, here they come, pay attention. Let your eyes transform what appears ordinary, commonplace, into what it is, a moment in time, an observed fragment of eternity. Philip Levine
Saying Time Eyes Pay Pay Attention Fragment Observed Attention Come Look Transform Ordinary Commonplace Eternity Your Moment Appears Here
My sense of a poem - my notion of how you revise - is: you get yourself into a state where what you are intensely conscious of is not why you wrote it or how you wrote it, but what you wrote. Philip Levine
You Yourself Sense State Poem Wrote How Revise Get Intensely Where Notion Why Conscious
I realized poetry's the thing that I can do 'cause I can stick at it and work with tremendous intensity. Philip Levine
Work Cause Tremendous Poetry Stick Intensity Realized Thing
Back then, I couldn't have left a poem a year and gone back to it. Philip Levine
Year Gone Back Poem Left Then
It's ironic that while I was a worker in Detroit, which I left when I was twenty six, my sense was that the thing that's going to stop me from being a poet is the fact that I'm doing this crummy work. Philip Levine
Work Me Poet Sense Fact Detroit Crummy Doing Left Ironic Going Six Stop Being Which While Worker Twenty Thing
I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong. Philip Levine
Love Day Three Jazz About Hours Armstrong Louis Louis Armstrong Listen
Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice. Philip Levine
Work You People Care Some People Advice Meet Way Worthy See Some About Poetry Know Until Readership Doing Going Happens Then Who Keep Keep Going
I'm afraid we live at the mercy of a power, maybe a God, without mercy. And yet we find it, as I have, from others. Philip Levine
God Power Mercy Live Others Find Without Maybe Afraid
My father died when I was five, but I grew up in a strong family. Philip Levine
Family Strong Father Up Five Died Grew
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. Philip Levine
Me Invent Parents Sense Those Feel Like Foreign Families American Just Themselves European Many
No one can write like Vallejo and not sound like a fraud. He's just too much himself and not you. Philip Levine
You Too Much Too Fraud Write No-One He Like Himself Sound Just Much
For sure I once thought of myself as the poet who would save the ordinary from oblivion. Philip Levine
Myself Thought Poet Once Would Oblivion Sure Ordinary Who Save
Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home. Philip Levine
Home Me Writing Will Nothing Think Extraordinary About Only Poetry Oblivion Because Ordinary Keep Now Save
I write what's given me to write. Philip Levine
Me Given Write

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