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Authors
Denise Levertov (1923-1997)
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Some of Levertov’s poems have been gathered in Collected Earlier Poems 1940–1960 (1979). The Selected Poems of Denise Levertov appeared in 2002. Her individual volumes include The Double Image (1946), Here and Now (1957), Overland to the Islands (1958), With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (1960), The Jacob’s Ladder (1962), O Taste and See (1964), The Sorrow Dance (1967), Relearning the Alphabet (1970), To Stay Alive (1971), Footprints (1972), The Freedom of the Dust (1973), Life in the Forest (1978), Candles in Babylon (1982), Oblique Prayers (1984), Breathing the Water (1987), A Door in the Hive (1989), Evening Train (1992), Tesserae (1995), and The Great Unknowing: Last Poems (1999). Making Peace (2005) is a posthumous collection edited by Peggy Rosenthal. The Poet in the World (1973) and Light Up the Cave (1981) include essays on her own work, memoirs, reviews of other poets, and some theoretical essays. New and Selected Essays appeared in 1992. Conversations with Denise Levertov (1998) is a collection of interviews. James E. Breslin’s From Modern to Contemporary: American Poetry 1945–1965 (1984) contains a discussion of Levertov. Linda Wagner-Martin edited Critical Essays on Denise Levertov (1990), and Anne Little edited Denise Levertov: New Perspectives (2000).
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).
Questions for Discussion and Writing
Levertov is often described as a "mystical" or "mysterious" contemporary poet. However, descriptions of her work often talk of her indebtedness to the verse of William Carlos Williams and others who thought of themselves as working against metaphor, mystery, and any sort of delusion. In moving onward from Williams, Levertov conserves his form and sound, but challenges his thinking about the fundamental poetic act. In other words, the specialness of Levertov, and her contribution to postwar American poetry, might lie in her power to create a magical aura within forms which some of the Moderns pioneered: plain-sounding, simple-looking lines that engaged directly with the world as found.
1. Levertov's In Mind (1964) has the look of a Williams poem -- short, simple verses presented in an open form. Compare the poem to Williams's To Elsie or The Wind Increases. Specifically, describe the way in which these poems end and the difference in mood between Levertov's poem and Williams's.
2. The two halves of Green Snake (1961) seem to be two different poems. Why does the verse form vary?
3. Compare the selections from Levertov's Olga Poems (1966) to Sexton's To Sylvia. Each is ostensibly a poem to a dead woman, someone loved by the speaker. But what are the major differences? Which poem seems to you to focus more upon the deceased, rather than upon the self? Why? What details from Olga's life are included in Levertov's poem? What is the effect of including those details? Does Sexton use a similar strategy in writing about Sylvia Plath? Why or why not?
4. As a poem imagining the first English poet, Caedmon (1987) is at least in part about poetic inspiration as Levertov understands it. What specifically moves Caedmon to be a poet? Where do you see those motives elsewhere in Levertov's poems?
