By John McMurtrie, c. 2015 San Francisco Chronicle
Philip Levine, the former poet laureate of the United States whose poems dignified working-class life, died on Saturday at his home in Fresno. He was 87 years old.
Frances Levine said her husband of 60 years had been diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer less than a month ago.
Mr. Levine, whose honors included the Pulitzer Prize, taught at California State University Fresno for more than three decades. He served as poet laureate from 2011 to 2012.
Raised by Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in Detroit during the Great Depression, Mr. Levine began working in factories at about age 14. He wrote poetry in his off hours, determined “to find a voice for the voiceless,” he said in an interview with Detroit Magazine. “I saw that the people that I was working with … were voiceless in a way. In terms of the literature of the United States, they weren’t being heard. Nobody was speaking for them. And as young people will, you know, I took this foolish vow that I would speak for them and that’s what my life would be.”