Philip Levine Named U.S. Poet Laureate

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It's always exciting to contemplate the naming of a new poet to the office of U.S. Poet Laureate.  Philip Levine, the 83-year-old Detroit native and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Simple Truth, has been named by the Librarian of Congress as the Poet Laureate for 2011-12. 

In his review of Mr. Levine's last collection, News of the World, our reviewer, Christopher Phelps, wrote: "Levine's is a world where men and women 'buy and sell each other.' It is also "an immense, endless opera punctuated by the high notes of sirens & the basso profundo of trucks & jackhammers & ferries & tugboats."  You can read the full review here.