Poet Philip Levine

Good morning. This is Philip Levine with another poem for you.You know as you travel around New York City, you look at different people...you're in the subway, you're on the streets and you say, "You know that guy would never read a poem," "For that woman, poetry doesn't exist. They wouldn't read it, they wouldn't write it, they wouldn't care about it."

One of the interesting things is that you're wrong. There is no one who is without poetry. And I want to read a poem that comes out of life that is not familiar to most newyorkers. Written by a man named Luis Omar Salinas born on the tex-mex border and published by Arte Publico of Houston.

I Salute the Dead

In this drunken town
bitten by the whores
of Texas, I pause witt
a beer to salute the dead.

Someone's in my house
-- the dead child of Texas
haunts the woodwork
and the child is everywhere
tonight waiting for the dawn,
tomorrow maybe playing
in the mud.

My nephew asks if the black
children he sees on TV
are the poor, and I reply,
"We are the poor."
He cannot understand,
and I know this house
is as poor as this drunken
town
and I drink my beer and
hiccup into song.

- Luis Omar Salinas

For more from WNYC's Poet in Residence, click here.

Poetry Links

William Matthews LINKS
from Poets.org

Mingus at the Half Note is in a WIlliams' Collection, Time & Money: New Poems (1995)

Read an interview with Matthews from the Atlantic Monthly
It was the last interview conducted with him before his sudden death (of a heart attack,) on November 12, 1997, the day after his fifty-fifth birthday, at his home in New York City.

The Alun Lewis Page
For information on Alun Lewis
War Poetry
Alun Lewis' War Poems
Alfred A Knopf on Philip Levine
Information on many of Levine's books
Galway Kinnell Reads Walt Whitman
Kinnell reads Whitman's "To The States" and comments on it
Philip Levine on the Internet Poetry Archive.
Read Levine's poetry and listen to Levine read his poetry
The Leonard Lopate Show: Poetry Magazine
Hear Mr. Lopate talk about the 100 million-dollar donation from Ruth Lilly to Poetry Magazine
The Next Big Thing: Poetry Lives
Alice Quinn, poetry editor for the New Yorker and executive director of the Poetry Society of America, sorts through some entries to the Poetry in Motion Contest
e-poets Network Book of Voices
a list of poets and poems from the Chicago area-- you can listen to poets read their work
The Poetry Project
is at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, since 1966
Bartleby.com
A collection of books online, including a bounty of verse
An Audible Anthology
A collection of poems printed in the Atlantic Montly to read or listen to
Gumball Poetry
It's a zine, it's a website, it's a gumball machine that dispenses poetry!

A selection of Philip Levine's books

A New Selected Poems
Available for purchase at Amazon.com

The Simple Truth
Available for purchase at Amazon.com

The Mercy
Available for purchase at Amazon.com

What Work Is: Poems
Available for purchase at Amazon.com