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"Belle Isle [Detroit], 1949," Philip Levine
Author: Philip Levine
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We stripped in the first warm spring night
and ran down into the Detroit River
to baptize ourselves in the brine
of car parts, dead fish, stolen bicycles,
May 1
OLIVER L
OLIVER L
:
this may be in the perspective of criminals who stole these since car parts and "stolen" bicycles are things that people steal from people in the real world
Feb 7
Isabell Z
Isabell Z
:
This is way they described the Detroit River and it sounds so dirty. It makes it seems like its just a lot of water that's dirty.
Jul 15
Tia J
Tia J
:
The way that he explains the depth of how dirty the water is. Lets you know that there is more than just dirty water in Detroit
Nov 14
Nathaniel C
Nathaniel C
:
That calmness can be found within an experience, even if the river and the cold are not calming activities.
melted snow.
I remember going under
hand in hand with a Polish highschool girl
I'd never seen before, and the cries
our breath made caught at the same time
on the cold, and rising through the layers
Nov 14
Nathaniel C
Nathaniel C
:
Those layers of darkness are not just physical objects, but the darkness that comes with the cold. They are the narrowing of thought, the focus of cold immersion, and the tunneling of vision. It is so interesting to notice the breath in this moment.
of darkness into the final moonless atmosphere
that was this world, the girl breaking
the surface after me and swimming out
on the starless waters towards the lights
of Jefferson Ave. and the stacks
of the old stove factory unwinking.
Turning at last to see no island at all
but a perfect calm dark as far
as there was sight, and then a light
and another riding low out ahead
to bring us home, ore boats maybe, or smokers
May 1
OLIVER L
OLIVER L
:
They are seeing things in the distance which are possibly people coming for them though the don't know who if it actually was someone because it may not is.
Feb 8
Isabell Z
Isabell Z
:
It caused me to re-read it because at this point it seems as if they don't want to be at the river. Yet it also does seems like they do want to be at the river.
[Edited]
Nov 14
Nathaniel C
Nathaniel C
:
I think the lights are just things they notice, out in the river. Things that will guide them back out of the cold, calm, dark towards the shore.
walking alone.
Back panting
to the gray coarse beach we didn't dare
fall on, the damp piles of clothes,
and dressing side by side in silence
to go back where we came from.
Philip Levine, "Belle Isle, 1949" from They Feed They Lion and The Names of the Lost. Copyright © 1999 by Philip Levine. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Source: They Feed They Lion and The Names of the Lost (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)
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