On this day in 1928, Pulizer Prize winning poet Philip Levine was born in Detroit. He was educated in the Detroit public school system and at what is now Wayne State University. He published his debut collection of poems, On the Edge, in 1961. By 1979, Poems New and Old received the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the first American Book Award for Poetry. His work, The Simple Truth, won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize. Much of his poetry was set in working class Detroit, making it gritty and relatable. In 2011, Levine was named the 18th U.S. Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress.