New Criticism and Philip Levine.

We continued to talked to about the Great Gatsby. And we went around the room and discussed what people retrieved from the reading of the novel. Along with discussed about the book we also discussed New Criticism. From Chapter 5 of Critical Theory we learned that close reading, textual evidence, elements like metaphor, irony, and ambiguity were kept even after that particular movement. New Criticism came after Modernism and before the Beats.
Also we were preparing for individual poems to discuss later in class, possibly Friday. The poem was by Philip Levine "What Work Is." The poem is one big stanza that symbolize a line or waiting in a line that was highlighted in the piece. I believe that enjambment and repetition played a huge part in the understanding of "What Work Is." It made connects from the piece to "the common man" or gave it culture/universal value. But to fully understand a poet you have to know the background of the individual.
Philip Levine grew up in Detroit, Michigan whos parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. Detroit was a major subject of his life's work. He began writing poetry while he was going to night school at Wayne University, and during this time he worked days at one of that city's automobile manufacturing plants. From the University of Michigan Press, "The Bread of Time," which was a memoir where Levine celebrates his teachers, and writers whose lives and work were misunderstood and misinterpreted. In the process of writing about his life he came to the conclusion that he was also engaged in a quest, striving to discover "how I am." Then later from an interview Levine said "The American experience is to return and discover one cannot even find the way, for the streets abruptly end, replaced by freeways, the house have been removed for urban renewal that never takes place, and nothing remains." Levine brings narrative and lyric together in his poetry, and he likes to take the role as storyteller. Then from Modern American Poetry I learned that "Levine's poems music depend on a tension between his line breaks and syntax. His sentences cascade down the page, passing through skeins of modifying clauses and phrases, through enjambment after enjambment until the energy of his sentenced is exhausted.