Detroit, 1940 In 2011, eighty-three-year old Philip Levine was named Poet Laureate of the United States. A native of Detroit, Levine worked in various industrial jobs as a young man. His experiences on the night shift at an auto factory provided him with one of the major topics for his poems. He remembers Detroit as a “vital city,” which is confirmed by five menus from the spring of 1940 that shows a prosperous Midwestern city hard at work and play. This menu from the Detroit-Leland Hotel...
