Philip Levine and the Narrative Poem

There are many ways to tell a story, but one way to do so is through poetry. Because of a poem's heightened attention to language, including figurative language, there is an opportunity to tell a story in a vivid, intense, interesting, and different way. In this writing workshop, we will focus on writing narrative poems - that is, poems that tell a story. To do so, we will focus on the work of Philip Levine, a Detroit native who was also the Poet Laureate of the United States. Levine's poems often tell powerful, elegiac stories about the industrial Detroit he grew up in, about his family, about his life as a child, adolescent, and adult. We are also lucky that Royal Oak Public Library has a deep collection of Levine's work, including a rare copy of a lecture Levine gave in 2009, "A History of My Befuddlement." So come ready with stories, including family stories, and a willingness to write, remember, storify, and memorialize!