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Great Salutations
Philip Levine
 If
"living legend" weren't a cliché, and if it were possible to say
this of a poet without plunging into absurd hyperbole (after all,
it's Earth we're on, not some other better-read planet), I'd apply
that term to this poet, who gave a rare reading in Los Angeles
on February 4th at Beyond Baroque. However: it is, and it's not, so I won't.
Philip Levine's books and awards include The
Simple Truth (The Pulitzer Prize), What Work Is (The
National Book Award) and Ashes: Poems New and Old (The
National Book Critics Circle Award and the first American Book Award
for Poetry). He is widely regarded as one of the great living
American poets and one of the most influential, not only as a poet
but as a teacher, for his students included Larry Levis, David St.
John and Gary Soto.
Philip Levine wrote the letter below to the
poets of Los Angeles, and this is its first reappearance since we
read it at the 1992 Los Angeles Poetry Festival. The affectionate
recollection recounts his first meeting with Thomas McGrath, a Los
Angeles area poet who fell victim to the House of UnAmerican
Activities in the McCarthy era.
Levine read with Naomi Riplansky, of whom he
wrote, “No other North
American poet I've read has been able to incorporate the fire and
brilliance of Latin American surrealism in original work of such
startling authority.”
The night after the Levine/Riplansky
reading, liz gonzález and I joined Levine and several poets of the anthology Poets of the
Non-Existent City: Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era at Beyond
Baroque for a
tribute to Thomas McGrath, who figures prominently in Levine's
letter. It was the perfect occasion to share the letter once more
with the poets of Los Angeles.
—Suzanne
Lummis
OPEN LETTER TO THE POETS OF LOS
ANGELES
Philip Levine
(Solicited by
The Los Angeles Poetry Festival for the festival of 1992)
Below: McGrath with his son,
Tomasito,
in 1974. Photograph by Dennis Sorensen
 Let me recount
a conversation I had the first night I was in your city and also its
aftermath, which proved invaluable to me. August ’57 at the home of
Tom McGrath, a hill top place I had thought existed only in Joan
Crawford movies, but here was McGrath living there on what he made
carving wood sculpture and what his wife earned as a therapist. I
had been brought there by my friend Henri Coulette, a poet and
protégé of McGrath’s at L.A. State (now California State University,
Los Angeles) where Tom had been fired for refusing to cooperate with
the House UnAmerican Committee, then the most un-American committee
ever assembled. (That was before this year’s Republican
convention.) Coulette and I had just arrived. McGrath opened beers
for all three of us, and they gave me the seat of honor so I could
take in the view – the lights sparkling in the canyons below – and I
thought, What a place! McGrath turned suddenly to Henri and said,
“Why didn’t you warn him?” Henri’s blue eyes twinkled. “I didn’t
think it mattered,” he said. “Mattered,” said Tom, “you call
yourself his friend and you let him come unwarned.” Warned about
what?” I said, taking the bait. “L.A.” said Tom, “How did you get
here?” he asked. I told him I’d driven down that day from Palo
Alto. “You’re supposed to stop in Santa Barbara,” Tom said,“ the
continent tips downward just there, and all the garbage flows here
and then out to sea.” They both laughed uproariously. By garbage
Tom meant me. Henri said, “He likes the place, he says it reminds
him of home.” McGrath looked at me. “My God, Levine, where are you
from?” “Detroit,” I said. “Oh, no problem, you’ll love it here.”
As it turned out I did love it. I tried
to get a job there, but the only thing I could come up with was
teaching technical writing at L.A. State, so I went to Fresno.
And wrote about Detroit. Tom soon left L.A. to return to the
Midwest and kept writing brilliantly about Los Angeles. The
next year Henri settled in at L.A. State for the rest of his life
and wrote savagely and truthfully about finding loneliness, love,
injustice, despair, and the courage to face them in your city.
Neither poet ever got the recognition he deserved because that is
the fate of poets of your city.
Some years
later McGrath gave me the best advice a poet has ever given me. It
came in two parts, and I want to pass it on to you because he was
your poet and he saved my writing life. I was 37 years old and had
published one book in a tiny edition almost no one had read. Tom
said, after reading the book, “You’ve got the craft to say what you
want to say, and you’re old enough to know something. Now for the
next fifteen years you have to buy time any way you can and write
your poems. Live badly if you have to.” Tom was homeless at the
time; he looked shabby and beaten, but in fact his emotions burned
as intensely as ever. He was working on his great epic poem “Letter
to an Imaginary Friend”. Then he added his second piece of truth.
“Do it the hard way. No one will read you for years because you
come from nowhere and you don’t know anyone, so do it the hard way
and you’ll always feel good about your poetry.”
McGrath and
Coulette, your Whitman and your Baudelaire. What a rich tradition
you inherit, and still there remains so much great poetry to be
written about your city. Only you can do it. As our mentor said.
“The hard way.” |
