What work is Poems

This collection amounts to a hymn of praise for all the workers of America. These proletarian heroes, with names like Lonnie, Loo, Sweet Pea, and Packy, work the furnaces, forges, slag heaps, assembly lines, and loading docks at places with unglamorous names like Brass Craft or Feinberg and Breslin's First-Rate Plumbing and Plating. Only Studs Terkel's Working ( LJ 3/1/74) approaches the pathos and beauty of this book. But Levine's characters are also significant for their inner lives, not merely their jobs. They are unusually artistic, living ``at the borders of dreams.'' One reads The Tempest ``slowly to himself''; another ponders a diagonal chalk line drawn by his teacher to suggest a triangle, the roof of a barn, or the mysterious separation of ``the dark from the dark.'' Issued simultaneously by the publisher with New Selected Poems , What Work Is ranks as a major work by a major poet. It is very accessible and utterly American in tone and language. Highly recommended for all poetry collections, large and small.-- Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.