“What Work Is” was published in 1991 as the titular poem of Philip Levine’s National Book Award for Poetry winning collection. Philip Levine, a self-professed poet of the American working class, had a long and successful career in poetry stretching from the 1950s to his death in the 21st century. “What Work Is” is a poem about the economic hardships faced by members of the working class, specifically the Detroit auto-industry factory workers from which Levine himself came. While inspired by important poets in the Confessional movement, Levine eschewed any one poetry school in favor of straightforward, narrative poetry of which this is exemplary.

Poet Biography

Philip Levine was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1928. Levine, an identical twin, was the son of Jewish immigrant, working-class parents. Levine faced hardships in his childhood, from the death of his father, to the anti-Semitism he encountered in school and beyond. At the suggestion of a high school teacher, Philip Levine began writing at the age of 14, eventually going on to write poetry during his studies at Wayne University in Detroit. After earning his degree in 1950, Levine worked night shifts at both Chevrolet and Cadillac factories.

After a failed first marriage that ended in 1953, Levine began attending writing workshops at the University of Iowa, though he was not registered as a student. While there, Levine studied with both Robert Lowell and John Berryman, the latter of which had an especially important impact on his work. During this time, Levine married again, this time to an actress, Frances Artley, with whom he would stay for the rest of his life. Upon officially graduating with an MFA from the University of Iowa in 1957, Levine was promptly awarded the prestigious Jones Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University. The next year he became a professor at California State University, Fresno, where he would teach for the remainder of his career.

Levine taught and worked as Writer-in-Residence at numerous universities, including Columbia, Brown, and Princeton. He garnered success with the publication of many collections of poetry, winning the National Book Award for Poetry for both Ashes: Poems New and Old (1979) and What Work Is (1991), as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Simple Truth (1994). Levine also served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2011-2012. After a celebrated career, Philip Levine died of cancer in 2015 at the age of 87.

Poem Text

Levine, Philip. “What Work Is.” 1992. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

Philip Levine begins his poem “What Work Is” with a scene: people “stand[ing] in the rain” (Line 1), waiting in an employment line. After addressing the reader directly, claiming that they “know what work is” (Line 3) if they are “old enough to read this” (Line 4), Levine abruptly shifts back to the scene. The poet’s description of the work line is now recounted in the second person: “mist / into your hair, blurring your vision” (Lines 8-9). The figure, “you,” (Line 11) in the poem is loosely Levine himself, but includes the reader because of its second person perspective.

The poem’s protagonist thinks he “see[s] [his] own brother” in the line with him (Line 10) but realizes that he is mistaken: “of course it’s someone else’s brother” (Line 13). This misapprehension leads to the figure imagining his brother, first how he looks and then his economic struggles. The “you”-figure’s brother spends “hours of waisted waiting” (Line 18), only to be refused work anyway. The figure “love[s] [his] brother” (Line 22) and, now that he is thinking about him, imagines him where he really is: “home trying to / sleep off a miserable night shift” (Lines 26-27). When the brother is not at work, he “get[s] up / […] to study his German” (Lines 28-29) so that he can sing Wagnerian opera.

Although the “you” hates Wagner, he loves his brother. The implied speaker of the poem asks, “How long has it been since you told him / you loved him” (Lines 33-34). The poem devotes substantial reflection to this question, asking the “you” how long it has been since they embraced, looked closely at, and even kissed his brother. The speaker answers that “You’ve never / done something so simple, so obvious” (Lines 36-37). The poem negates many possible reasons for this lack of expressed affection: it is not that the “you” is “too young or too dumb” (Line 28), or “jealous or […] mean” (Line 39), or even “incapable of crying” (Line 40) in front of “another man” (Lines 41). Instead, the poem asserts in its concluding line, it is because the “you”-figure simply does not “know what work is” (Line 42).