What Work Is

Philip Levine

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1991

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form & Meter

Philip Levine’s “What Work Is” does not follow a rigid or traditional verse form. The poem is composed of a single stanza block consisting of 42 lines. Levine also eschews traditional metrical constraints, a not at all uncommon practice for poets of his (or the contemporary) period. Levine is, however, careful to maintain a certain consistency of line length. While his lines are not governed by any rhythmic metrical patterns, even loosely, they are almost entirely made up of nine syllables. A nine-syllable line is just one syllable shy of the most common and natural-sounding of English meters: iambic pentameter. While Levine’s lines do hover around this length instead of sticking rigidly to it, they sometime fall short (as with the eight-syllable “that does not hide the stubbornness” (Line 16) or the seven-syllable “You know what work is—if you’re”) (Line 3), or exceed its length (as with the ten-syllable “and of course it’s someone else’s brother” (Line 13) or “not because you’re jealous or even mean”) (Line 39).

Levine’s rejection of meter helps him to keep his text governed by an informal, conversational tone. His (near) precision with line length, rather than contrasting this commitment, serves to strengthen it. The long tradition of English poetry in pentameter or tetrameter is both due to the natural way these lines sound, and a contributor to why they sound so natural. Levine’s use of this length, then, helps his poem maintain structural integrity while making this structure fade into the background, foregrounding the conversational rhetoric that is most important to the text.

“You” and Second-person Perspective

The poem’s concluding phrase, “you don’t know what work is” (Line 42), appears both in the title of the poem and in its first few lines, and introduces perhaps the only ambiguity in the text. After all, the poem declares that “You know what work is” (Line 3) at its beginning. Additionally, the entirety of the poem seems to define in no uncertain terms “What Work Is”: the long and soul-crushing struggle of waiting in rain, both literally and metaphorically, laboring to survive. Why, then, does the poem conclude with the opposite assertion: that you “don’t know what work is” (Line 42)? This ambiguity results in part from Levine’s subtle use of the second-person perspective in the poem. While the “you” refers initially to the reader (e.g., “if you’re / old enough to read this you know what / work is”) (Lines 3-5), the you becomes a kind of stand-in for the poet (or, at least, the speaker) by the time the lines “Feeling the light rain […] / in your hair, blurring your vision” (Lines 8-9) appear. However, the use of the second person allows an implied speaker separate from the “you” in the poem, an implied narrator who views the “you.” Because of the shifts in to whom the pronouns refer, all of these identities are always destabilized in the poem.

First, consider whether the “you” who “[doesn’t] know what work is” in the poem’s final line is the reader (Line 42). If this is the case, Levine’s poem highlights the reader’s lack of class awareness—after all, if he is “read[ing] this [poem]” (Line 4), or any poem for that matter, this might be a class-signifier that he “may not do [work]” (Line 5). In this reading, the reader of the poem cannot understand why the speaker of the poem does not embrace his brother because he does not understand the true psychological impact of “work” (Line 42), and how it hardens those who must do it.

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On the other hand, if the “you” in the final lines is not the reader but the protagonist-speaker, then why doesn’t he know “work” (Line 42)? After all, he himself spends “hours of wasted waiting” (Line 18) in the rain, just as his brother presumably did to obtain his Cadillac job. First, it is possible that the “you” does not yet truly understand work. In this reading, the speaker fails to express affection to his brother because he has not internalized the toll that work takes and, not recognizing its true cost, does not make his feelings known as he ought to.

Finally, it is also possible to read this ending as a distinction between the two brothers with regard to labor. The “you” of the poem is waiting in an employment line for a job. His brother, however, is no longer in the line because he lives every day working his “miserable night shift / at Cadillac” (Lines 27-28) for “eight hours” (Line 30). In this interpretation, the “you” does not truly understand the cost of work because he himself is not yet being crushed under its weight like his brother.

Enjambment

While “What Work Is” builds its meaning in largely conventional ways, embracing the immediate clarity of prose, it does sometimes create secondary meanings by its use of line breaks. Enjambment is the poetic device where a line break is placed against the natural syntax of a phrase. A poetic line that ends on a period or a comma, like “study his German” (Line 29), “hours of wasted waiting” (Line 18), or “one foot to another” (Line 7) are not examples of enjambment. On the other hand, Levine employs line breaks that “unnaturally” split a phrase or clause in two, and it is through these enjambments that he is able to create secondary meanings.

For example, the break used in these lines, “the sad refusal to give in to / rain” (Lines 17-18), creates a pause that makes a brief blank fill-in for whatever follows the “to” (Line 17). When the reader does not immediately know what it is that the brother refuses to “give in to” (Line 17), the blankness grows to encompass all manner of general and specific obstacles which any member of the working class must overcome simply to survive. Similarly, the enjambment in “so he can get up / before noon” creates a secondary reading where the brother must sleep simply in order to get up. In other words, the brothers’ survival itself is emphasized—a thematically important element to Levine’s description of the working class. Even the gap between the lines “since you told him / you loved him” (Lines 33-34) create meaning, simulating the difficulty the “you” has in expressing this sentiment, even in his own mind. Levine’s poem does not exclusively or overwhelmingly enjamb its lines but, when it does, it utilizes the device to create multiple meanings that further emphasize the thematic focuses of the poem.