Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Great Regulars: The Library of Congress was to announce

Wednesday that the 83-year-old Levine will succeed fellow Pulitzer winner W.S. Merwin this fall. The laureate, who receives $35,000 and is known officially as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, serves from October through May. Richard Wilbur, Joseph Brodsky and Robert Pinsky are among the previous appointees.

"I'm a fairly irreverent person and at first I thought, "This is not you. You're an old union man,'" Levine said during a recent telephone interview from his home in Fresno, Calif.

"But I knew if I didn't do this, I would kick myself. I thought, "This is you. You can speak to a larger public than has been waiting for you in recent years.'"

from Hillel Italie: Associated Press: Philip Levine named country's poet laureate

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The country wants to know more about its next poet-in-chief.

Sales have jumped for books by Philip Levine, a Pulitzer Prize winner who on Wednesday was named the U.S. poet laureate. Within a day of the Library of Congress' announcement, several of Levine's books had sold out on Amazon.com, including "News of the World" and "The Simple Truth."

from Hillel Italie: Associated Press: Sales soar for books by new poet laureate

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