What Work Is

Philip Levine envisioned himself as a poet of the working class, and “What Work Is” certainly attests to that mission. The poem’s title is itself a declaration of definition—it unabashedly states that the body of the poem will define “work” (Line 2). While the poem in its entirety builds a more complex definition, the question raised by the title is answered in the poem’s opening couplet: work is when “We stand in the rain in a long line / waiting at Ford Highland Park” (Lines 1-2). This definition of work is specific: it does not refer to work in the general sense, which can include any sort of effort whether paid or not (emotional work, for instance). Additionally, this definition excludes upper-class work, whether white-collar, intellectual, or artistic. Levine’s definition of work here is the hard labor undertaken by working-class Americans for the purpose of survival.

The poem’s moment of fourth-wall breaking bolsters this definition, where the speaker directly addresses the reader, saying, “if you’re / old enough to read this you know what / work is, although you may not do it” (Lines 3-5). Even if a reader of poetry is privileged enough “not [to] do” (Line 5) the employment-line hard labor Levine discusses, they are still a member of a world where that work is all around, supporting the reader in ways that cannot be missed.

Even as the poem positively defines work—work is “waiting in the rain” (Line 1), “the sad refusal to give in” (Line 17), “a miserable night shift / at Cadillac” (Lines 27-28)—it also negatively defines work, describing what it isn’t. Work is not “study[ing…] German” (Line 29), “sing[ing…] opera” (Lines 30, 31), or any other pursuit of passion which is not profitable. If, like the hypothetical reader, the brother in the poem did “not [have to] do” work (Line 5), then he would be free to pursue his artistic practice. Work is not only the long uncomfortable waiting for a job and the long, miserable nights at a factory, but it is also what prevents people from pursuing education and art, their passion and self-expression. Put another way, in Levine’s poem work is what bars people from their own humanity.

Although there are multiple ways to read the poem’s conclusion, it is clear that it casually connects expressing affection with knowledge of work. On one read, if the “you”/speaker truly understood the human cost of work, then he would embrace his brother with no reservation, expressing his feelings as openly as if he would never again see his brother. The implication is that these scenarios are similar; although his brother is not dying, the long “hours of wasted waiting” (Line 18) and working will take his life and vitality just as surely as a sudden disaster. For Philip Levine, work is the hard and brutal reality whose necessity divides the working class from those economically privileged enough to avoid it.