They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine (1972)

The fifth book of poetry by working class poet Philip Levine, U.S. Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, National Book Award winner.

Poetry Review: They Feed They Lion is a powerful and passionate book of poetry, and contains Phil Levine's best poem. That poem is the title poem, written in light of the 1968 riots in his home town of Detroit. To a relentless beat "They Feed The Lion" speaks of the oppressed, the raging, the dispossessed, the beaten, and in just five verses says all that needs to be said about all those populations. The thing to do here would be to quote the entire poem, or for you to find it on the internet and read it -- read it aloud -- or find Levine himself reading it on YouTube. But I'll just quote some bits here:

   Out of burlap sacks ...
   Out of the acids of rage ...
   They Lion grow.

   Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride ...
   Mothers hardening like pounded stumps ...
 
   From "Bow Down" come "Rise Up," ...
   The grained arm that pulls the hands ...
   They Lion grow.

A poem still contemporary today, that addresses issues as specific as the BLM movement to the widespread anger in every industrial city of America.

They Feed They Lion also contains my favorite Levine poem, "Salami." The poem begins with the vivid description of an old Spanish woman making salami at her kitchen table:

   And if a tooth of stink thistle
   pulls blood from the round
   blue marbled hand
   all the better ...

The poem goes on to describe a Spanish stone cutter asking the Virgin for blessings, and his grown but childlike daughter, "lost in the wind, or lost/ in the mind." The poem ends with the poet, with his own terrors and his own small son's breaths

  going and coming, and each
  bore its prayer for me,
  the true and earthy prayer
  of salami.

I don't know how any poet could find so much story to tell, and so much philosophy to unravel, in such a humble poem and such a humble subject.

This is just a taste of They Feed They Lion. There are other great poems such as "Coming Home," one of Levine's series of Angel poems "Angel Butcher," "Breath," "Detroit Grease Shop Poem." The poems in this book cover Levine's usual subjects: work, memory, Detroit, workers, family. He was never a star, he didn't get publicity, demand attention, act eccentric; he just worked hard and kept on working, teaching many grateful students along the way. A blue collar poet. This may be Levine's best book, or maybe not, but it certainly contains some of his best poems. If you haven't read the poems in They Feed They Lion, you haven't read what you need to read by Philip Levine. [5★]