A Door in the Hive

by Denise Levertov

In her sixteenth collection of new poetry from New Directions, Denise Levertov displays what The Village Voice has called all her “virtues of musicality, mystery, and directness.” A Door in the Hive addresses paintings, music, landscapes, terror in El Salvador, but the emphasis again––as in her recent Breathing the Water ––is on the contemplative. Her dialogue between “the eager inward gaze and the vast enigma” deepens. Meditative, the poems are at the same time informed by a keenly felt “Extremities, we are in/unacknowledged extremis./We feel only/a chill as the pulse of life/recedes.”

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

American poet Denise Levertov was born in Ilford, Essex, England. Her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, was Welsh. Her father, Paul Levertoff, from Germany migrated to England as a Russian Hassidic Jew, who, after converting to Christianity, became an Anglican parson. At the age of 12, she sent some of her poems to T. S. Eliot, who replied with a two-page letter of encouragement. In 1940, when she was 17, Levertov published her first poem.

During the Blitz, Levertov served in London as a civilian nurse. Her first book, The Double Image, was published six years later. In 1947 she married American writer Mitchell Goodman and moved with him to the United States in the following year. Although Levertov and Goodman would eventually divorce, they had a son, Nickolai, and lived mainly in New York City, summering in Maine. In 1955, she became a naturalized American citizen.

During the 1960s and 70s, Levertov became much more politically active in her life and work. As poetry editor for The Nation, she was able to support and publish the work of feminist and other leftist activist poets. The Vietnam War was an especially important focus of her poetry, which often tried to weave together the personal and political, as in her poem "The Sorrow Dance," which speaks of her sister's death. Also in response to the Vietnam War, Levertov joined the War Resister’s League.

Much of the latter part of Levertov’s life was spent in education. After moving to Massachusetts, Levertov taught at Brandeis University, MIT and Tufts University. On the West Coast, she had a part-time teaching stint at the University of Washington and for 11 years (1982-1993) held a full professorship at Stanford University. In 1984 she received a Litt. D. from Bates College. After retiring from teaching, she traveled for a year doing poetry readings in the U.S. and England.

In 1997, Denise Levertov died at the age of 74 from complications due to lymphoma. She was buried at Lake View Cemetery in Seattle, Washington.

Levertov wrote and published 20 books of poetry, criticism, translations. She also edited several anthologies. Among her many awards and honors, she received the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Frost Medal, the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Lannan Award, a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the last couple of months, I've read four collections of poems by Louise Gluck, and I've just finished two collections by Denise Levertov. Except for several poems by Levertov from the anthology The Voice that is Great Within Us, I was not familiar with either poet until recently. Of the two, I find Denise Levertov to be much the better poet.

I posted the comments above in Jan. of 2013.

I've just finished rereading A Door in the Hive. My opinion of Denise Levertov hasn't changed over the intervening years. She is a first-rate poet as far as I'm concerned.

I have not read any more of Louise Gluck's poetry since 2013, but plan to reread a couple of her volumes this year. Perhaps I will like them better this time around. (I don't dislike her. I just think
Levertov is the better poet.)

[Mattea Gernentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What do words, too, / do there, the real ones, / while we dally with their pale / understudies... / Invisible hive, has it no small door / we could find if we stood / quite still and listened?" (Dream Cello, 103).

3.5 stars. What an abundance of poems. The sheer length of this collection (at over 200 pages) is impressive in itself. However, out of that vast mélange, few poems deeply captured me. Among my favorites were "The Past (I)," "Flickering Mind," "Ancient Airs and Dances," "Letter to a Friend," and "The Love of Morning." I must say the final seven pages or so are golden—so convicting.

Levertov is the queen of wielding repetition well and has some incredible openings [ex. "They part at the edge of substance. / Henceforth, he will be shadow / in a land of shadow" (126) and "Night's broken wing" (144)]. I love her devotion to Rilke, her passion for her faith and the preservation of the earth, and her exploration of ekphrasis. Above all, Levertov asks: what are the annunciations in our lives today?

[Elizabeth Payne · Rating 5 out of 5]

explicitly religious poems live alongside ones less so, giving a devotional feel to the entire collection. Levertov's genius, for me, lies in the way her poems demand and draw out emotion, and how she articulates the feelings arising from scenes I didn't realize someone else also noticed--the way houseplants turn their leaves to light, the way "God waited." for Mary's reply...

"The bricks aren't beautiful--but time / may change them, after their years / of heat and smoke. Time in the rain."

"The day's crowding arrived / at this abundant stillness. Each thing / given to the eye before sleep, and water / at my lips before darkness. Gift after gift."

[Krista Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great religious poems...
"A Traveler" "I'll chance/the pilgrim sandals."
"Flying High" amazing descriptions



...and just brilliant lines
"...we've passed that wide river remembered/from a tale about boyhood and fatal love, written/in vodka prose, clear and burning..." (For Instance)
"If one's fate is to survive only sorrow, one has no right to the name survivor." (a quote that starts out "Distanced" - who wrote it?)
"...The hoe, the digging stick,/were tools of a sacrament..." (El Salvador: Requiem & Invocation)
"...We came to live with the poor./To be/evangelized by the poor/..."Let us unite in faith and hope/as we pray for hte dead/and for ourselves." (El Salvador: Requiem & Invocation)

[Octavia Cade · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poems in this collection are undoubtedly well-written, the language is smooth and clear. But despite feeling as if I should, I didn't connect emotionally with a lot of them - they were poems to admire rather than love. Even the libretto on a horrible (true) tragedy in El Salvador was something I knew to be horrifying rather than felt.

Perhaps it's because so many of the poems are religious? I'm a fairly hardened sceptic myself, and though I certainly can have emotional reactions to lovely religious verse, there seems to be a higher bar there for me. It's no coincidence, I think, that my favourite poem of the lot, "In Tonga", was about bats. I tend to respond better, in poetry, to descriptions of the concrete - and especially of the natural world - so that may be something of an explanation. Other readers will no doubt differ in their preferences, so if you particularly enjoy spiritual poetry then a lot of this collection will likely resonate well for you.

[Eliana · Rating 5 out of 5]

We read “Flickering Mind” in my senior seminar class and I immediately went looking for the collection it came from. Kindly, this used copy was available for purchase online, and I was reminded of the gift that beautiful words are, passed between fragile human hands, from Creator God. Some books were always meant to make their way to us in time. I think this was one such book for me.

Except: I found a small dead spider pressed into page 96, golden and spindly, next to a poem about the setting sun’s unhurried creeping over the mountains.

——
P.S.
Petition to rewrite the Goodreads summary of this book, because whoever wrote it has clearly never read anything by Levertov.

[Kati · Rating 5 out of 5]

I asked my daughter to bring me a book from to-read poetry stack and she picked this. How lovely it was. There’s a long poem about El Salvador that is quite jarring in parts. There were poems themed more around nature and daily life and many that touched in religious themes and assertions. They all dealt with the important things though.

[Seth the Zest · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book good enough to sit and read straight through at the library.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across one of Levertov's poems and found this book to read more. A great collection of her work.

[Leigh Kramer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Levertov's poetry but this was an uneven collection to me. By far my favorite poem was Intimation.

[LAUR · Rating 4 out of 5]

some of the most gorgeous ethereal decadent exquisite diaphanous life-changing poems!!!! denise levertov leaves me stunned every time