Poet Philip Levine

Levine: Good morning this is Phil Levine. With all the fraud and deceit you read about every day in the paper you wonder - how do you react to it?

Levine: How do you take it? And I scoured the poetry I knew and I came across a brilliant poem from the Tang Dynasty written by Lu Yu and wonderfully translated by the American poet Kenneth Rexroth. (It's worth mentioning that in this poem, a tea house is a place you go to get drunk.) It's called, "The Wildflower man."

THE WILD FLOWER MAN
Do you know the old man who
Sells flowers by the South Gate?
He lives on flowers like a bee.
In the morning he sells mallows,
In the evening he has poppies.
His shanty roof lets in the
Blue sky. His rice bin is
Always empty. When he has
Made enough money from his
Flowers, he heads for a teahouse.
When his money is gone, he
Gathers some more flowers.
All the spring weather, while the
Flowers are in bloom, he is
In bloom, too. Every day he
Is drunk all day long. What does
He care if new laws are posted
At the Emperor's palace?
What does it matter to him
If the government is built
On sand? If you try to talk
To him, he won't answer but
Only gives you a drunken
Smile from under his tousled hair.

-Lu Yu

Levine: I think we've all dreamed of living just like that for as long as possible. And a good many of us have actually tried it. I for one.
Host Back Announce: The Tang Dynasty (618-907) has become known as the Golden Age of Chinese Poetry . More than 50,000 poems by 2200 poets from this era have survived to today.

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

Chinese Tea World
Lu Yu's "Tea Classic"

Tea Saint Lu Yu
A Lu Yu website

www.essential-china.net
The Golden Age of Chinese Poetry

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