Levine To Succeed Merwin As U.S. Poet Laureate

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STEVE INSKEEP, host:

Across the street from the Capitol in Washington is the Library of Congress, which today will officially new poet laureate. He's Pulitzer Prize-winner Philip Levine. Mr. Levine started writing poetry at age 13 while living in Detroit. In 2005, he told NPR he was inspired by the preachers he heard on the radio there.

Mr. PHILIP LEVINE (Poet Laureate): Detroit, at the time, was probably half-Southern. And every Sunday morning you could turn on these guys - both white and black - and they would belt out language like I never heard. I loved it.

INSKEEP: Half-Southern because it had received so many migrants from the South. Levine went on to spend much of his life writing verse about the working class. At the age of 83, he will take his post as poet laureate in October.

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