News of the World [Paperback]

In this “characteristically wise” (The New York Times Book Review)collection from one of our most celebrated poets, Philip Levine brings us finely made, powerfully telling imagery from the worlds of hand, heart, and mind.“All the earmarks of a valedictory testament, what with its autumnal ruminations on personal history and its haunted remembrances of things past, yet Levine is too canny a craftsman to settle for dutiful curtain calls, and too much the hard-bitten ironist to fall prey to false nostalgia. If certain obsessions here are bound to strike longtime readers as old news (innocence and experience, manual labor and class struggle), the visceral language that fleshes the poems out still feels hot off the press.” —David Barber,The Boston GlobePhilip Levinewas born in 1928 in Detroit. He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including the National Book Award forWhat Work Isand the Pulitzer Prize forThe Simple Truth.He divides his time between Fresno, California, and Brooklyn, New York.OUR VALLEY

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn'tl3+