.. the odor
of mid-summer hanging in winter.
On January 16, 1989, the poet
Philip Levine published a long-
er version of an extraordinary
poem he called, Perennials,
than a reduction he issued two
years later, in his own collec-
tion, What Work Is. Scholars
must surely be driven batty,
in their quarrel over which
is the greater, the more auth-
entic, the ultimate statement.
Which voyage of Ishmael's was
his true return to the sea, we
might as well ask. Every visit
proves the mystery of this po-
em; this morning, just a frag-
ment brings me to its presence.
Philip Levine
What Work Is
Perennials
op. cit.
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