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Born in England, Denise Levertov moved to the United States
in 1947 with her American husband and later lived in Mexico
for three years. She felt that her move to America helped
her to develop as a poet, and she was particularly influenced
by William Carlos Williams's work with organic poetic form,
or form that reflected the poet's relationship to his subject.
Levertov's poetry was also informed by European authors such
as the German poet Rilke and the Jewish theologian and philosopher
Martin Huber. Her eclectic interests encouraged an equally
diverse poetry: Levertov wrote in both plain and descriptive
language and communicated with both clarity and mystery, leading
one critic to describe her work as "magical realism."
Following the Vietnam War, Levertov often focused on the increasingly
unstable American political climate but also composed an intimate,
lyrical sequence about her sister Olga. At the time of her
death, she was professor of English at Stanford University.
Levertov published eighteen books of poems, including The
Double Image (1946), O Taste and See (1964),
Footprints (1972), Breathing the Water (1987),
and Tesserae (1995).
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