Philip Levine (poet)

Philip Levine
Levine reading on September 16, 2006
Born	(1928-01-10)January 10, 1928 Detroit, Michigan, USA
Died	February 14, 2015(2015-02-14) (aged 87) Fresno, California, USA
Occupation	Poet
Alma mater	Wayne State University University of Iowa
Years active	1963–2015
Spouse	Patty Kanterman (1951–1953), Frances J. Artley (1954–2015)
Children	Mark, John, Teddy

Philip Levine (January 10, 1928 – February 14, 2015) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for more than thirty years in the English department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well. He served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2000 to 2006, and was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2011–2012.

Philip Levine grew up in industrial Detroit, the second of three sons and the first of identical twins of Jewish immigrant parents. His father, Harry Levine, owned a used auto parts business, his mother, Esther Priscol (Prisckulnick) Levine, was a bookseller. When Levine was five years old, his father died. While growing up, he faced the anti-Semitism embodied by Father Coughlin, the pro-Nazi radio priest.

Levine started to work in car manufacturing plants at the age of 14. Detroit Central High School graduated him in 1946 and he went to college at Wayne University (now Wayne State University) in Detroit, where he began to write poetry, encouraged by his mother, to whom he dedicated the book of poems, The Mercy. Levine earned his A.B. in 1950 and went to work for Chevrolet and Cadillac in what he called "stupid jobs."

He married his first wife, Patty Kanterman, in 1951. The marriage lasted until 1953.

In 1953, he attended the University of Iowa without registering, studying with, among others, poets Robert Lowell and John Berryman, the latter of whom Levine called his "one great mentor."