My Lost Poets: A Life in Poetry - Hardcover

PHILIP LEVINE was born in 1928 in Detroit and attended Wayne State University. After a succession of industrial jobs, he left the city for good and lived in various parts of the country before settling in Fresno, California, where he taught at the state university until his retirement. He was the author of twenty collections of poetry and was the recipient of two National Book Awards and the Pulitzer Prize, among many other honors. He was poet laureate from 2011 until 2012, and served twelve autumns as poet-in-residence at New York University. He died in February 2015.

“Delightful reading. . . . Levine excels at telling good stories and drawing memorable portraits of people.” —Charles Simic, The New York Review of Books

“A balancing act between melancholy and the thrill of discovery . . . [This work] belongs in every library where the poetry collection matters—and that should be every library.” —Herman Sutter, Library Journal (starred review)

“You never get the sense that the poet, despite advancing years, is looking over his shoulder to posterity. Instead he looks directly at you, the world and the mysteries of his soul.” —Paul Wilner, San Francisco Chronicle

"Warmhearted, robustly beautiful autobiographical essays . . . Crisply rendered memories and observations are conveyed with abiding tenderness, self-deprecation, sharp humor, and steely lyricism, all shaped by [Levine’s] profound thankfulness for his guiding lights, his 'lost poets.' . . . This is vital and affecting testimony to what it means to live as a poet in a largely indifferent, relentlessly churning world." —Donna Seaman, Booklist
 
"A sparkling collection of essays . . . full of scintillating remembrances of fellow poets . . . Like his poetry, generous, honest, and real." —Kirkus Reviews
 
"Like so many of Levine’s poems, this book evinces a commitment to evoking a hard-won experience and bringing it to lyric life." —Publishers Weekly