. >> reporter: at 82, phillip levin is author of some 20 volumes of verse and one of the nation's most honored poets with a pulitzer and numerous other prizes, but he started life in detroit working in auto plants, sometimes waiting in line for a job as he describes in his poem "what work is." >> this is about waiting. shifting from one foot to another, feeling the light rain falling like mist into your hair blurring your vision until you think you see your own brother ahead of you maybe ten places. >> brown: so these feel familiar to you? levin joined me at the yancy richardson gallery in new york. he'd written an essay for an exhibition of photographs by andrew moore that capture a lost world of detroit. an old school, homes, and factories including ford's river rouge plant where levine himself once worked. >> when i was a young guy working in these places and didn't see a way out as yet-- and i certainly didn't think the way out would be poetry-- what were you doing? >> usually five people would taken a enormous piece of hot steel which four or us would hold with tongs and put it in