Denise Levertov

British American poet and political activist.

• Born: October 24, 1923
• Birthplace: Ilford, Essex, England
• Died: December 20, 1997
• Place of death: Seattle, Washington

Biography

Denise Levertov was a visionary poet whose work combines the ethereal nature of consciousness with the specificity of the natural world. Levertov’s magical view of the world has its origins in her ancestry: Her mother was descended from the Welsh tailor and mystic Angel Jones of Mold; her father was descended from the noted Jewish mystic Schneour Zaiman, a Hasid, or member of a sect of Judaism that emphasized the soul’s communion with God. Levertov’s father ultimately converted to Christianity, becoming an Anglican priest, but he retained his interest in Judaism and told Hasidic legends to Denise and her older sister Olga, encouraging in them what Levertov would call "a wonder at creation."

In 1947, Levertov moved to the United States, and it was there that she established her reputation as a poet, finding there a new sense of the English language that suited her poetic vision. Accordingly, she escaped what she saw as the stifling Romantic and Victorian traditions of the past. Her abandonment of formal meter and stanzaic form accompanied her transformation from a British to an American poet.

As a result, she embraced the more organic forms of free verse epitomized by imagistic poets such as H. D. and William Carlos Williams—particularly with regard to Williams’s credo "no ideas but in things." In addition, she embraced the Black Mountain school of poetry. Like its representatives Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley, she discovered meaning in the poet’s personal relationship to her subject while conveying that meaning through lines whose unit of measure was the human breath rather than a standard meter. Indeed, her poems are so carefully constructed that their artistry may go unnoticed. They strike the reader hardly as written works but rather as a form of rarefied speech, their imagery both clear and pure.

In 1956, Levertov moved with her son and her husband, novelist Mitchell Goodman, to Mexico, where she was joined by her mother. Much of her most moving work appears in Life in the Forest, which recounts her mother’s last years and the comfort she found in closely observing the natural world. As the war in Vietnam escalated in the 1960s, Levertov’s artistic agenda reflected the political turmoil engulfing the United States, although in one book during this period, The Sorrow Dance, she again turned to personal matters and created some of her finest work in poems, inspired by her older sister.

Levertov’s power as a poet came from her ability to synthesize, to combine opposites and to achieve a sense of balance: Jewish and Christian, English and American, personal and public, ancient and modern. Her work springs from a well deep within her, yet it is informed by keen observations of the external world. Her best poems echo the joy of life in the senses, as is apparent from titles such as O Taste and See. For Levertov, the life of the body informs the life of the mind, and the past informs the present. A poet of connection, of linkage, she was a discloser of the invisible web that ties both people and nature together.

Breathing the Water, her fifteenth book of poems, includes "The Showings: Lady Julian of Norwich, 1342–1416," in which the poet again asserts the relevancy of the past to everyday life. While some critics and readers were disenchanted by Levertov’s political agenda in Relearning the Alphabet and To Stay Alive—specifically by her opposition to the Vietnam War and her support of feminism—her continued preoccupation with the varieties of love, be it maternal, erotic, or religious, earned for her a wide readership. Her ability to see the miraculous in the mundane, in addition to her command of natural speech rhythms and arresting imagery, placed her at the forefront of contemporary poetry through the 1990s.

Levertov lectured around the world and, after 1982, was a professor at Stanford University, where she conveyed her sense of vision to a new generation of writers. She also continued to write prose alongside her poetry, including the essay collection Tesserae: Memories and Suppositions (1995). Levertov battled lymphoma, and died of related complications in Seattle, Washington, on December 20, 1997. She was seventy-four years old. She remains celebrated as an important poet and an influential teacher.

Author Works

Poetry:

The Double Image, 1946

Here and Now, 1957

Overland to the Islands, 1958

Five Poems, 1958

With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads, 1959

The Jacob’s Ladder, 1961

O Taste and See: New Poems, 1964

City Psalm, 1964

Psalm Concerning the Castle, 1966

The Sorrow Dance, 1966

A Tree Telling of Orpheus, 1968

A Marigold from North Vietnam, 1968

Three Poems, 1968

The Cold Spring, and Other Poems, 1969

Embroideries, 1969

Summer Poems, 1969, 1970

Relearning the Alphabet, 1970

A New Year’s Garland for My Students: MIT, 1969–1970, 1970

To Stay Alive, 1971

Footprints, 1972

The Freeing of the Dust, 1975

Chekhov on the West Heath, 1977

Modulations for Solo Voice, 1977

Life in the Forest, 1978

Collected Earlier Poems, 1940–1960, 1979

Pig Dreams: Scenes from the Life of Sylvia, 1981

Wanderer’s Daysong, 1981

Candles in Babylon, 1982

Poems, 1960-1967, 1983

Oblique Prayers: New Poems with Fourteen Translations from Jean Joubert, 1984

The Menaced World, 1984

Selected Poems, 1986

Breathing the Water, 1987

Poems, 1968-1972, 1987

A Door in the Hive, 1989

Evening Train, 1993

Sands of the Well, 1996

The Great Unknowing: Last Poems, 1999

Poems: 1972–1982, 2001

The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, 2013

Long Fiction:

In the Night: A Story, 1968

Drama:

El Salvador: Requiem and Invocation, pr. 1983 (libretto; music by W. Newell Hendricks)

Nonfiction:

The Poet in the World, 1973

Light Up the Cave, 1981

New and Selected Essays, 1992

Tesserae, 1995

Translations:

In Praise of Krishna: Songs from the Bengali, 1967 (with Edward C. Dimock, Jr.)

Selected Poems, 1969 (of Eugene Guillevic); Black Iris, 1988 (of Jean Joubert)

Edited Texts:

Penguin Modern Poets Nine, 1967 (with Kenneth Rexroth and William Carlos Williams)

The Collected Poems of Beatrice Hawley, 1989

Songs from an Outcast: Poems, 2000 (by John E. Smelcer)

Bibliography

Brooker, Jewel Spears. Conversations with Denise Levertov. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998. Collects interviews with Levertov conducted by various interviewers from 1963 to 1995. The most common themes addressed are faith, politics, feminism, and poetry.

"Denise Levertov." Poetry Foundation, 2017, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/denise-levertov. Accessed 24 May 2017.

Felstiner, John. "Poetry and Political Experience: Denise Levertov." In Coming to Light: American Women Poets in the Twentieth Century, edited by Diane Wood Middlebrook and Marilyn Yalom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985. Shows that Levertov awakens human sensitivity—male and female—by insisting on the sacramental quality of all physical presence. In poetry, she finds hope while facing the horrors of war in Central America, in Vietnam, and in American cities. Felstiner’s words on the oratorio El Salvador: Requiem and Invocation are particularly worthwhile.

Lacey, Paul A. "Denise Levertov: A Poetry of Exploration." In American Women Poets, edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1986. Considers the influence of Hasidism in Levertov’s poetry: She treats the miraculous in a matter-of-fact tone. Her weakness in the early poetry, Lacey says, stemmed from an inability to deal seriously with evil in the world. Later, however, she grew into the political consequences of what it means to be, as she says, "members one of another."

Marten, Harry. Understanding Denise Levertov. Columbia: South Carolina University Press, 1988. One of the most important studies of Levertov in book form, Marten’s analysis covers four decades of poetry. Individual chapters give an overview, a history of the earliest poetry, an analysis of the volumes that established her reputation, a consideration of her public voice, and a discussion of spiritual dimension in her later development. The annotated bibliography of critical articles is particularly helpful.

Rodgers, Audrey T. Denise Levertov: The Poetry of Engagement. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1993. Examines Levertov’s political commitment to antiwar themes in particular, placing poems on this topic in relation to Levertov’s earlier work and her life. The author had access to Levertov herself and to previously unpublished letters in the preparation of this study.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. Denise Levertov. New York: Twayne, 1967. Although written when Levertov was in mid-career, this biography, survey of poems, and bibliography provide an excellent introduction to the poet’s life and work. Seven chapters discuss Levertov’s family and education in England, her poetic themes and forms, and influences from modernist poets. Includes a chronology and notes.