Students recall their time in the Workshop (when classes were taught in the Quonset Huts by the Iowa River) in the collection Seems like Old Times in the University of Iowa archives:

“…to have been in John Berryman’s extraordinary and intense poetry workshop with W. D. Snodgrass, Donald Justice, Philip Levine, Paul Petrie, Robert Dana, Constance Urdang, Jane Cooper, Donald Finkel, Henri Coulette—the list continues beyond the capacity of my memory, but it was a course I approached with rapture and fear, owing in part to Berryman’s sometimes jagged abruptness, as when, having warned me beforehand that he was going to exhibit the profound mortality of one of my works, he held it out at arm’s length in the class, looked at it with loathing, and said, “Now, what are we to say about this ridiculous poem?”

Philip Levine & Sam Hamill reading, Iowa City, Iowa, 1984.

Philip Levine’s work was included in an anthology of poems about Kenney’s, a famous bar in Iowa City. Kenney’s is no longer in operation, but it was a well-known hangout for writers in town. The collection also includes works by Marvin Bell, Stephen Berg, William Dickey, Paul Engle, Peter Everwine, Anselm Hollo, Donald Justice, Vern Rutsala, William Stafford, Mark Strand, James Tate, Mona Van Duyn and many others.

Philip Levine talks about being taught by Robert Lowell and John Berryman at the University of Iowa, where his classmates included Donald Justice, W.D. Snodgrass and Henri Coulette.

Philip Levine’s plaque on the Iowa Ave Literary Walk reads “Instead I was born in the wrong year and in the wrong place, and I made my way so slowly and badly that I remember every single turn, and each one smells like an overblown rose, yellow, American, beautiful, and true.”

In this recording, Philip Levine reads at Van Allen Hall on The University of Iowa campus, date unknown (late 20th century).

Philip Levine reading his poetry at the University of Iowa Main Library, in 2012.