What Work Is with the working class or work in general. This helps place this collection within the tradition of working class poetry. For instance, besides work, love also is a major theme for Levine in this collection. "What Work Is" is a poem primarily written for his brother, and the difficulty of expressing that love. Often enough the theme of love is expressed in a subdued way and is shadowing the bolder themes most largely associated with work. The poems feature different types of work, some of which reflect the actual work experience of the author. For instance, the poems "Fear and
Fear which in extreme cases of fear (horror and terror) can be a freeze response or paralysis. In humans and animals, fear is modulated by the process of cognition and learning. Thus fear is judged as rational or appropriate and irrational or inappropriate. An irrational fear is called a phobia. Psychologists such as John B. Watson, Robert Plutchik, and Paul Ekman have suggested that there is only a small set of basic or innate emotions and that fear is one of them. This hypothesized set includes such emotions as acute stress reaction, anger, angst, anxiety, fright, horror, joy, panic, and sadness.