18 pages • 36 minutes read
Philip LevineA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Philip Levine’s “What Work Is” does not follow a rigid or traditional verse form. The poem is composed of a single stanza block consisting of 42 lines. Levine also eschews traditional metrical constraints, a not at all uncommon practice for poets of his (or the contemporary) period. Levine is, however, careful to maintain a certain consistency of line length. While his lines are not governed by any rhythmic metrical patterns, even loosely, they are almost entirely made up of nine syllables. A nine-syllable line is just one syllable shy of the most common and natural-sounding of English meters: iambic pentameter. While Levine’s lines do hover around this length instead of sticking rigidly to it, they sometime fall short (as with the eight-syllable “that does not hide the stubbornness” (Line 16) or the seven-syllable “You know what work is—if you’re”) (Line 3), or exceed its length (as with the ten-syllable “and of course it’s someone else’s brother” (Line 13) or “not because you’re jealous or even mean”) (Line 39).
By Philip Levine