EUGENE–Philip Levine, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and well recognized as one of the nation’s most distinguished poets, will read from his work on Thursday, March 1, at the University of Oregon.

The free public reading, part of the Program in Creative Writing Reading Series, will begin at 8 p.m. in the Alumni Lounge of Gerlinger Hall, 1468 University St. It is made possible through the generous support of the UO College of Arts and Sciences.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his collection "The Simple Truth," Levine is the author of 18 books of poetry, including the recently published volume, "The Mercy." His other collections include "What Work Is," winner of the National Book Award; "Ashes: Poems New and Old," which received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the first American Book Award for Poetry; "7 Years From Somewhere," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; and "The Names of the Lost," which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.

Critic Peter Davison, in reviewing "The Mercy," writes that "If Walt Whitman’s vision contained multitudes, and if Emerson’s vision of nature transcended what it saw with its own eyes, Levine’s poetic vision, nearly religious, transcends class, transcends natural boundaries, and transcends time."

And reviewer Wen Stephenson recently noted that "what has remained for Levine–born in Detroit in 1928 to parents who were Russian-Jewish immigrants–is memory. Few writers have made one time and place as singularly their own as has Levine in his elegies for the working-class life of the city he knew as a child and young man."

A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a longtime professor at both Fresno State and New York University, Levine also has published a collection of essays, "The Bread of Time: Toward an Autobiograph." In addition, he edited "The Essential Keats" and co-edited and translated two books, "Off the Map: Selected Poems of Gloria Fuertes" and "Tarumba: The Selected Poems of Jaime Sabines."

Levine has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, the Frank O’Hara Prize and two Guggenheim Foundation fellowships. For two years, he served as chair of the Literature Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts, and he was elected a chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000.

In a recent interview, Levine said he believes the future bodes well for poetry.

"It’s like music and dance," he said. "Nothing can kill it, even the best efforts of the worst poets and critics. People go on needing to hear, to read, to watch, to take part, to listen. It’ll survive as long as we do."

For more information, call the Creative Writing Program, (541) 346-0544.

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