U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine shared insights about his life and poetry at an all-school assembly on Monday, October 3, 2011. He talked about his relationship with poetry in a straight-forward, matter-of-fact style, not mincing any words and was truly funny about “how unpeopled poetry had become” when he first started writing.

“Except for the speaker, no one is there,” Philip said. “There’s a lot of snow, a moose walks across the field, the trees darken, the sun begins to set, and a window opens. Maybe from a great distance you can see an old woman in a dark shawl carrying an unrecognizable bundle into the gathering gloom.”

Philip’s presentation resonated with his much younger audience. “He was so engaging and personable despite the difference in our ages and in the life experiences that we’ve had” said Carly Rodgers. “It was especially helpful when he gave examples about his inspiration. It reinforced the lesson that inspiration can come from anywhere, even from life on my family’s small farm.”

Following the assembly, Philip met with several International Baccalaureate (IB) classes including World Literature—Writers’ Focus, one of George School’s IB World Literature courses. Taught by former Bucks County Poet Laureate Terry Culleton, “The class offers students the opportunity to study a variety of world authors while developing their own creative writing and submitting it to the class for workshop-style critique sessions.”

“Philip showed us how important poetry was. He encouraged us to write about what mattered most to us and helped us to see that poetry did not have to be focused on the beautiful,” said Jake McNichol. “His poetry is about humanity and the human condition and his poems share experiences through the lens of their lives in a powerful way.”

To Jake, the lessons learned from Philip are immediately helpful as he develops his manuscript. “I’m using dialog rather than narration to develop my characters. Philip helped me think about how I might refine the details of their conversations to make the characters more powerful.”

Philip grew up in Detroit in the 1940s, during World War II when “the city’s factories were filled with hardworking men doing backbreaking labor.” He is the author of twenty collections of poems, including News of the World in 2009, which The New York Times Sunday Book Review describes as "characteristically wise." Levine won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for The Simple Truth, the National Book Award in 1991 for What Work Is and in 1980 for Ashes: Poems New and Old the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1979 for both Ashes: Poems New and Old and 7 Years From Somewhere and the 1975 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Names of the Lost.

Read more in Philip's interview by Andrew Goldman in The New York Times, November 4, 2011. The Pennsylvania school he mentions is George School.