Poet Philip Levine

Good Morning. This is Phil Levine. Come to read you a poem for Halloween. It's called "Villanelle". It's by the poet Weldon Kees. The title refers to the form of the poem which you'll hear when I read it.

Villanelle
The crack is moving down the wall.
Defective plaster isn't all the cause.
We must remain until the roof falls in.

It's mildly cheering to recall
That every building has its little flaws.
The crack is moving down the wall.

Here in the kitchen, drinking gin,
We can accept the damndest laws.
We must refrain until the roof falls in.

And though there's no one here at all,
One searches every room because
The crack is moving down the wall.

Repairs? But how can one begin?
The lease has warnings buried in each clause.
We must remain until the roof falls in.

These nights one hears a creaking in the hall,
The sort of thing that gives on pause.
The crack is moving down the wall.
We must remain until the roof falls in.

You know, it's possible that Weldon Kees scared himself into oblivion. In 1955 he vanished. His car was found on the Sand Francisco side of the Golden Gate Bridge. And no one… no one officially has seen him since… though there's rumors of his existence here and there… He's sort of like the King of Poetry.

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

Poetry Links

www.frankohara.com
A really fun Frank O'Hara fan site
Theodore Roethke
from Poetry Exhibits
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 William Matthews from the Atlantic Monthly
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