A recent and quite nice “Here & Now” interview with Philip Levine  (our new Poet Laureate, a post whose honor and worth admittedly don’t always prove to be quite the same thing) – a “working class poet” interview for Labor day. (The interview starts 1:10 in).

I particularly like his defense of stories in poetry (why should fiction get to hog all the narrative fun?) and his response to “Is Eminem a poet?”

Levine mentions several poets writing today who thrill him (well, Larry Levis isn’t writing today, he died in 1996, but the others are alive and active.) Did the googling for you — links to a poem by each:

Larry Levis “Anastasia and Sandman”
“I refuse to explain.”

Joseph Stroud “Night and Day”
“So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.”

Tom Sleigh “On the Platform”
“cello cutting through garble, Bach’s repetitions
hard-edged as a scalpel probing an open wound.”

Adrienne Rich “The Art of Translation”  (audio)
“neither as genius nor terrorist would they detain you”

Dorianne Laux “Facts About the Moon”
“Forget us. We don’t deserve the moon.”

Daisy Freed “Econo Motel, Ocean City”
“the promiscuously cheerful guilty American scientist dies horribly.”

And here’s one of Levine’s, titled “Gospel.”