In high school, a teacher told him, “You write like an angel. Why don’t you think about becoming a writer?“ But he was already working at night in auto factories, though just 14. Detroit Central High School graduated him in 1946, and he went to college at Wayne University (now Wayne State University) in Detroit, where he began to write poetry, encouraged by his mother, to whom he dedicated the book of poems, "The Mercy". Levine earned his A.B. in 1950 and went to work for Chevrolet and Cadillac in what he called "stupid jobs." The work, he later wrote, was “so heavy and monotonous that after an hour or two I was sure each night that I would never last the shift.”