Every year on my birthday, I read "Let Me Begin Again" by American poet laureate Philip Levine. Once described by Edward Hirsch as "a large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland," Levine's work centers the American working class.

I'm an artist because, more than anyone, art helps me feel like I'm not alone. I've spent my life trying to pay that back, or forward--I don't know the chronology of love.

When I read "Lights I Have Seen Before," or "What Work Is," or "You Can Have It," I know I'm not alone. The dignity of work, the elegance of unadorned truth, the desperate yet pinpoint expression of self. The unsaid words underlying action. Like all my heroes, Levine knows reality holds all the beauty (or truth) we need. In his work, they're one and the same.

"Let Me Begin Again" has grown with me through many birthdays. I was once a tiny wise child. I hope to be one again someday.