Imagery in “Reinventing America”
Imagery in “Reinventing America”
Over the years poets have emerged with different styles, striking every reader some how. Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1928, Philip Levine has molded his image as a tough working-class poet who writes upon past experiences and the feelings provoked. His own family problems and other problems, such as the war in Vietnam, helped Levine develop his poetry. To say the least he ”took bad luck and made it inspiration”(Gioia, npn). “The crummy jobs that young Levine agonizingly endured would have seemed natural to most working class kids…”(Gioia, npn), but to Levine they created a bad vision of becoming poor, a middle-class persons nightmare. Philip Levine describes immigrant life in a village of his past as a youth and uses a lot of imagery to develop his meaning in “Reinventing America.” Levine’s reflection upon his life as a young man and his uncle’s past experiences are one way that Levine displays his past experiences. “Reinventing America” is filled with imagery that has Levine painting a portrait of village life, his youth, and also the uncles past giving us a sense that things over time stay the same and generations live similar lives.
Levine begins the poem drawing a picture of the boys neighborhood. He writes on the size of the city and how you could walk around for sometime and not get anywhere. The speaker tells of the hardships of the neighborhood, and how he stayed in his own part avoiding the “boys…with animal hungers” (Levine, 917), which he means is the local bully’s. He goes on writing how he would bum cigarettes and wish to go home with a beautiful woman. This boy’s life reflects his uncle’s life and the boy knows how time is flying by, and before long he too will be like his half blind uncle. The uncle, who is married to an upset woman, spends a lot of time making calls on his radio. Levine tells of how as a boy he would sneak down to see his uncle and he would teach him things like boxing.
Levine then paints a portrait of his uncles past and more imagery comes into play as he gives an image of his uncle while he is downstairs. Levine describes the uncle as “wiry in his boxer’s shorts and high topped boots, chewing on a cigar, the one dead eye...