Originally published on How to Grow a Poem in April, 2023.
Phillip X Levine began writing "Woman on a Subway" more than 25 years ago, while sitting on a log in Woodstock, New York. But he may not be finished yet. So far, he can count at least 17 versions of the poem--or "prose song," as he describes the form he's arrived at for perhaps ten poems in his varied and prodigious catalog.
Levine is now widely recognized as a cultural leader throughout the Hudson Valley region, as a poet of both the page and the stage, as an actor, as president of the Woodstock Poetry Society, and as poetry editor of the sophisticated culture magazine, Chronogram. But he was a relative newcomer to Woodstock when he sat down on that log in early September 1997 and wrote the earliest iteration of the poem, in one roughly 30-minute sitting and in a rush of free association he thinks of as "stream of anxiety."
It’s significant too, he said, that it was written not on a keyboard but with pen and ink on paper, as all of his poems are (he uses a fountain pen). That provides a sort of mind-hand choreography that “is fluid, but slows my thinking down enough so my hand can keep up,” he said. The pace is further affected, he added, by the fact that he never really learned to write in cursive, having skipped parts of second and third grade in school when it’s taught, so his handwritten drafts are written in print, not longhand.
The prose-poem-heart of the work (which he first titled "Rant 64," the arbitrary number meant to suggest the speaker is a prolific ranter) has remained largely intact in the years since, other than continuing tweaks, although it was still some time before the subway came along. Originally, the speaker (Levine chose the second person he) was walking around on the ground and the woman, for example, was represented by the refrain “she knows.”
"Woman on a Subway" found its current form later when Levine attended the Chenango Valley Writers Conference over the course of four years. There, his workshop leader, Bruce Smith (a Syracuse University professor whose book The Other Lover was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize), suggested that he add some short lines to the stream-of-consciousness body of the poem.
“That mix of long and short lines led to the current form,” Levine says now.
If "Woman on a Subway" has undergone changes along the way, it has nevertheless been performed frequently in its various versions, including at the 2000 National Poetry Slam in Providence, Rhode Island, as a standalone piece in numerous venues, and as a part of Levine’s well-traveled solo theatrical poetry performance piece "approximate poet falls in love & can't get up."
Here’s the poem. Just my suggestion, you might want to read it aloud.
But first a quick word about that “X” in his byline. It’s, as you may have guessed, a conceit he devised to differentiate himself from another poet with (almost) the same name—and one who happened to be a Pulitzer Prize-winner and poet laureate of the United States. That Philip Levine, who spelled his first name with only one “l” unlike Phillip X, died in 2015, but his work and his fame live on.
Woman on a Subway
so you're sitting on the subway and you're staring straight-ahead and something just smacks you on your head and you turn around and it smacks you on your head again and you're not hurt but something is running out your ear and running down your neck and it kind of tickles but not funny tickles so you're not laughing but you're not crying either in fact you're not doing anything either way but you don't care because a woman
and at home all the people you've never met seem to know you because they keep phoning and though they never say anything you know that they don't know you because they always mis-pronounce your name and when they tell you that there's no annual fee you know that they're lying and it'll still take a lifetime to pay and what are you gonna do with all this aluminum siding anyway living in an apartment with no windows and only walls, only inside walls, so you tell them that you've died and hence you won't be needing siding, but if they'll leave their number you'll call them back if you snap out of it, but they won't and you don't and besides you know aluminum siding is quite different than a silver lining and instead you've got clouds that are so heavy they aren't lined with aluminum or silver or anything except probably lead and so it makes sense that they're so heavy and that your arms are so tired and your back is so tired and your head is so tired and you're just so tired just from carrying them around all the time but right now you don't care because
a woman
on the subway
and your feet hurt because they do or maybe because your shoes don't fit anymore, at least the way you've been wearing them so you swear tomorrow you'll try them on your other feet and yet you know you won't and who cares about shoes anyway because it's pants that count and you should know because you're wearing them at least in this family, and in that family, and in fact in every family you can ever think of because that's what you've always remembered wearing and always remembered other people not wearing and besides you know like you've never known anything else that every family has to have someone who wears the pants and you're just it and yet you wonder if you'll ever get the chance to take them off and just run naked and almost without worry and you remember once you almost did, you almost jumped into the river or was it a lake or maybe it was the ocean but then you remember you just don't know because you just didn't jump so you don't know but you decide then and there you don't care because
a woman
on the subway
moving towards you
and then it's dark and you've never seen it this black before and you can't even see your own finger as you jam it in your nose to see if you can feel even when it is so endless black and you think you feel but you can't be sure, because you don't really know really, you just think you know and you just get by with that because that is all you ever have to get by with anyway and so you let it go at that, and in fact you let everything go, including all the things you've ever dreamed of and all the things you've ever wanted and clutch instead the few things you've got like your nose and your finger and sometimes once maybe just maybe the sight and smell and touch of possibility of
a woman
on the subway
moving towards you
now moving away
--Phillip X Levine
Phillip is poetry editor for Chronogram magazine and president of the Woodstock Poetry Society. His solo theatrical poetry performance piece "approximate poet falls in love & can't get up" has appeared at numerous venues including Bowery Poetry Club, Cornelia Street Café, Woodstock Fringe Festival, Omega Institute, Universal Unitarian Church of Kingston, Nassau Community College, Mt. Saint Mary's College, Caffé Lena, Bridge Street Theatre.
New paid subscribers receive a 20% discount throughout the month of February. Your support is deeply appreciated!
I love this poem and poet who wrote it. I find it beyond prose's ability to write about it. To give it its due, I'd have to write a poem about it, maybe an ode.