Starlight | Essays and Criticism

  • Happiness as Seen in "Starlight"

    In the following essay, Barron shows how "Starlight" explores the complex emotion that is happiness and, in so doing, risks being too sentimental and nostalgic.

  • From Tranquility to Desperation

    In the following essay, Hill points how this poem quickly takes us from a summer scene of peaceful tranquility between father and son to one of desperation and fear.

  • Thematic Issues in Ashes: Poems New and Old

    In the following essay, Semansky explores thematic issues of emotional survival in three of Philip Levine's "father" poems in his collection, Ashes: Poems New and Old.

  • Looking Back on Van Wart's Childhood

    In the following essay, Van Wart explains how Levine "uses a complex dual perspective" to look back upon an event from his childhood.