Philip Levine is the author of sixteen books of poetry, most recently Breath (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). His other poetry collections include The Mercy (1999); The Simple Truth (1994), which won the Pulitzer Prize; What Work Is (1991), which won the National Book Award; New Selected Poems (1991); Ashes: Poems New and Old (1979), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the first American Book Award for Poetry; 7 Years From Somewhere (1979), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; and The Names of the Lost (1975), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. He has also published a collection of essays, The Bread of Time: Toward an Autobiography (1994), edited The Essential Keats (1987), and co-edited and translated two books: Off the Map: Selected Poems of Gloria Fuertes (with Ada Long, 1984) and Tarumba: The Selected Poems of Jaime Sabines (with Ernesto Trejo, 1979). He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize from Poetry, the Frank O'Hara Prize, and two Guggenheim Foundation fellowships. For two years he served as chair of the Literature Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts, and he was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000. He lives in New York City and Fresno, California, and teaches at New York University.

Other poems by Philip Levine in Verse Daily:
October 11, 2004:  "Morning in Liguria" "Rain seven days without letup...."
December 19, 2003:  "Why We Sing When We Work" "Renamed Efraim after the Lord of Light, he was given..."

About Fugue:
Poets in this issue: John Pursley III , Michael Meyerhofer, Janine Joseph, Philip Levine, Matthew Gavin Frank, Benjamin Vogt, Kathleen Rooney, Leonard Orr, Steven Rood, Roger Sheffer, Campbell McGrath, David Schloss, Lauren Goodwin Slaughter, Doug Ramspeck, Robert Krut, Timothy Green, David Troupes, Mark Sanders, Sandy Tseng, Peter Desy, Lynnell Edwards, Lisa Roullard, John Nieves, K.E. Duffin