What Work Is by Philip Levine
We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist into your hair, blurring your vision until you think you see your own brother ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers, and of course it’s someone else’s brother, narrower across the shoulders than yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin that does not hide the stubbornness, the sad refusal to give in to rain, to the hours of wasted waiting, to the knowledge that somewhere ahead a man is waiting who will say, “No, we’re not hiring today,” for any reason he wants. You love your brother, now suddenly you can hardly stand the love flooding you for your brother, who’s not beside you or behind or ahead because he’s home trying to sleep off a miserable night shift at Cadillac so he can get up before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most, the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him you loved him, held his wide shoulders, opened your eyes wide and said those words, and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never done something so simple, so obvious, not because you’re too young or too dumb, not because you’re jealous or even mean or incapable of crying in the presence of another man, no, just because you don’t know what work is.
Analysis:
Within this poem Levine focuses mostly on the person reading the poem, “you,” or a character in the poem. By utilizing the pronoun “you” it makes the reader feel as though the emotions that Levine displays are true to them. Such as in lines 22-24, “You love your borther, now suddensly you can hardly stand the love flooding you for your brother…” This makes the reader feel sadness and voiceless, which is exactly what Levine wants the reader to feel because he aims to portray the “voiceless worker.” This poem is more anectotal than other Levine poems. It begins with a man standing in line for work at Ford Highland Park. Levine then states “You know what work is…Forget you. This is about waiting” (lines 3,6). Instantly Levine portrays that work is solely to get money to support people’s families and that work is, or should be, your entire life. Phoebe Pettingell from The New Leader puts the work into this perspective,

“The ‘work’ referred to is not the familiar struggle of the artist to ‘ make it new. ‘ Levine means something that civilized literary society too often represses as a subject: manual labor. Thus he speaks of the men and women who perform endlessly repetitive tasks on automobile assembly lines; who climb down into the ‘pickling tanks’ to mix chemicals that plate plumbing fixtures; and who hammer together crates to hold soap while stinking drums of fat ‘sulk in the battered yard behind the plant’ until ready to be poured out. Nor does he let us forget those who ‘stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is-if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it’ (lines 1-5)” (Pettingell).
Throughout the poem this type of work is reiterated. Levine’s past greatly influenced this. His adolescence consisted of industrious, Detroit, Michigan. This type of work is all the work he knew. This is why Levine writes so passionately of it. However, his writing of these wokers differs from others writing of work,
“[Levine] mourns these stunted lives as he celebrates their heroism, the dogged persistence that preserves human feelings among denaturing machinery. Workers are, in his compassionate eyes, the Achilleses, Beowulfs, Deirdres and Beatrices of an industrial age prone to overlooking noble endeavor” (Pettingell).
Then, looking at the movement of the poem, it picks up speed as the man notices his brother look-a-like. This instantly gives the reader a shot of hope. However, Levine quickly shuts down that hope, just as a real worker would feel that sudden gain then loss of hope. The man who looks like his brother is described with a “sad slouch, the grin / that does not hide the stubbornnes, / the sad refusal to give in…” (lines 15-17). This description stands for all the workers standing in line. They all have a refusal to give in to the company’s. They all come out and stand. The climax of the poem is in lines 20-21 “‘No, we’re not hiring today,’ for any reason he wants.” This is a realization point for the man in the poem. He realizes that even though he knows he will not find a job, he still looks for one. The rest of the poem speaks of him missing his brother. This shows that he realizes that there is more to life than just working. That is why the last line states, “just because you don’t know what work is.” It means that even though the man does not know what work is anymore, and even after these realizations, he will still return because he is so lost in the world of depression that one can only work to get out of it.
The poem also has an aspect to it that makes the reader wonder and question. This could in part be due to thw way Levine writes. Pettingell describes his writing and voice as “frequently blurring the line between poetic utterance and prayer. What Work Is, in particular, has a hymn-like quality” (Pettingell). As in the Bible, one must interpret the message. Levine did not include things such as what the man was doing before he got in line, or what he did afterward. This openended-ness is somewhat new. However, one can infer. Before the man gets in line he was most likely at his house feeling down because he can’t even feed his own family breakfast. After the poem, the man has realized things, but still has that family to feed, and is somewhat jerked back to reality by this. The poem ends on a sad note because even though the man would like to see his brother, he can’t because not only does he not know what work is anymore, but he has to feed his family.
The tone of the poem resembles the tone of that whole Great Depression era of the 1930′s. The poem itself embodies the loneliness, desperation, helplessness and the boundaries felt by every man in poverty during that time. Levine truly has accomplished his goal in speaking for the “voiceless worker” because not only does the reader get the feel for that era and what the people are goign through, but also a train of thought of an average worker during that time. They did not only think of work, they thought of their family and had feelings and could be sentimental. Levine portrays this all in one anectode of one day at a factory.