NEW YORK — Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Levine, known for his detailed and personal verse about the working class, has been appointed the country’s new poet laureate.
The Library of Congress announced Wednesday that the 83-year-old Levine will succeed fellow Pulitzer winner W.S. Merwin this fall. The laureate, who receives $35,000 and is known officially as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, serves from October through May. Richard Wilbur, Joseph Brodsky and Robert Pinsky are among the previous appointees.
“I’m a fairly irreverent person, and at first I thought, ‘This is not you. You’re an old union man,’ ” Levine said from his home in Fresno, Calif. “But I knew if I didn’t do this, I would kick myself. I thought, ‘This is you. You can speak to a larger public than has been waiting for you in recent years.’ ”
Levine has received virtually every literary honor, but he is the least rarefied of poets. A Detroit native who as a young man worked in automobile plants, he has for decades chronicled, celebrated and worried about blue-collar life.
Levine’s awards include a Pulitzer in 1995 for “The Simple Truth” and a National Book Award in 1991 for “What Work Is.” The Associated Press
