Late Levine

So I have gotten caught up as much as is possible with Philip Levine's late work.

The basic chronology of his collections can be found in this earlier post, but the short version is that New Selected Poems covers everything from On the Edge (1963) through A Walk with Tom Jefferson (1988).  He later supplemented this with Unselected Poems, though he drew the line at Sweet Will (from 1985).  The vast majority of Sweet Will was incorporated into those two collections, whereas Tom Jefferson was not considered,* primarily because it was still in print.  Indeed, all the remaining books with Knopf, from What Work Is (1991) onwards, have never been re-anthologized, at least not in North America.**

While I suspect it won't happen, I think it would be a good thing if an editor at Knopf put together a supplemental collection that rounded up a few of Levine's missing poems (like "The Last Shift") and anything that appeared in print after 2009, but primarily going through What Work Is (1991) through News of the World (2009) and gathering up the best of them.

I'll just add in my two cents† as to my preferences:

What Work Is (1991)
     "Coming Home From the Post Office"
     "Facts"
     "Coming of Age in Michigan"
     "On the River"

The Simple Truth (1994)
     "Ode for Mrs. William Settle"
     "The Trade"
     "In the Dark"
     "Dreaming in Swedish"
     "Getting There"
     "The Escape"
     "The Simple Truth"
     "The Spanish Lesson"
     "My Mother with Purse the Summer They Murdered the Spanish Poet"
     "My Father with Cigarette Twelve Years Before the Nazis Could Break His Heart" (some thoughts on this poem here)

The Mercy (1999)
    "Flowering Midnight"
    "Reinventing America"
    "The Cafe"
    "Night Words"
    "Philosophy Lesson"
    "The Evening Turned Its Back Upon Her Voice"
    "These Words"
    "The Return"
    "The Mercy"

Breath (2004)
     "The Great Truth"
     "The West Wind"
     "The Two"
     "The Lesson"
     "The Esquire"
     "My Given Name"
     "The Genius"

News of the World (2009) (a partial review of this collection here)
     "Dearborn Suite"
     "Arrival and Departure"
     "Library Days"
     "Closed"
     "News of the World"
     "The Music of Time"

I haven't had much of a chance to track down any poems published after 2009, as I was quite short on time on my last visit to Robarts, but I'll make sure to spend some time on this on my next visit and will post an update on that, probably in a new post, however.

* New Selected Poems is missing (in my view) just a few from A Walk with Tom Jefferson.  I can understand why it wouldn't be worth the flak to add "Dog Poem," which is actually an anti-dog poem.  But I think "Winter Words" should have been added, and probably "I Sing the Body Electric" and "Picture Postcard from the Other World."

** Stranger to Nothing (Bloodaxe, 2006) is for the UK market and while it does cover all the Levine's books through Breath, and indeed is somewhat heavier on the later collections, it is a bit slimmer than is ideal.  It is not surprising that only about half of the poems I picked ended up in Stranger to Nothing, and it does include some that don't do as much for me.

† I want to be entirely clear I have no stake in this, and I am happy to delete this post if it truly impedes an editor from Knopf from actually undertaking such an endeavor.