The Freeing of the Dust

by Denise Levertov

Sixty poems reflect the contemporary writer's personal sentiments on the tragedy of war, the need to be free, and the meaning of family relationships and friendships.

Genres: Poetry

114 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

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

[Simone · Rating 2 out of 5]

clunky and without music (in a bad way)

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of her metaphors and phrases are just incredible, but other pieces I was unmoved by

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unwrap the dust from its mummycloths.
Let Ariel learn
a blessing for Caliban
and Caliban drink dew from the lotus
open upon the waters.
Bitter the slow
river water: dew
shall wet his lips with light.
Let the dust
float, the wrappings too
are dust.
- The Freeing of the Dust

The collection is broken into nine parts. The poems within each part seem to follow a tone or a theme, but more often than not seem to be unrelated (perhaps grouped for convenience or time of composition).

Part One consists of four short poems, related in one way or another to travel...

Always sir
looked down through, gives
a reclamation of order, re-
visioning solace: the great body
not torn apart, though raked and raked
by our claws -
- From a Plan

Brutally realized intentions speed us
from city to city - a driver's world:
and what is a driver? Driven? Obsessed?
These thickarmed men
seem at rest, assured, their world
a world of will and function.
- Bus

Our threads of life are sewn into dark cloth,
a sleeve that hangs down over
a sinister wrist. All of us.
It must be Time whose pale fingers
dangle beneath the hem . . .
- Journeyings


Part Two consists of four poems, each preoccupied with descriptions of nature...

Sooner than one would dream,
the first bird
wakes with a sobbing cry.
- In Summer

Fall mornings, its head of twigs
vaguely lifted,
a few apples
yellow in silver fog.
- An Ancient Tree

Each day
the cardinals call and call in the rain,
each cadence scarlet
among leafless buckeye
- April in Ohio


Part Three consists of five poems, each of which is marked by romantic or nostalgic overtones...

those wooden steps
are gone now, decayed,
replaced with granite,
hard, gray, and handsome.
The old steps live
only in me:
my feet and thighs
remember them, and mu hands
still feel their splinters
- A Time Past

All one winter, in every crowded hall,
at every march and rally,
first thing I'd look for was your curly head.
- Fragment

I wanted
to know all the bones of your spine, all
the pores of your skin,
tendrils of body hair.
To let
all of my skin, my hands,
ankles, shoulders, breasts,
even my shadow,
be forever imprinted
with whatever of you
is forever unknown to me.
To cradle your sleep.
- What She Could Not Tell Him


Part Four consists of fourteen poems, returning to the political subject matter for which the poet is known...

'Ten-year-old Eric
was killed during racial tension last summer'
- Photo Torn from The Times

they sing and fight. I see their spirits
visible, crowns of fire-thorn
flicker over their heads.
- The Distance

She is weeping for her lost right arm.
She cannot write the alphabet any more
on the kindergarten blackboard.
- Weeping Woman

for if they did understand precisely
what they were doing, and did it anyway, and would so it again,

then I must learn to distrust
my own preference for trusting people
- The Pilots

Smart bombs replace
dumb bombs. 'Now we can aim
straight into someone's kitchen.'
- May Our Right Hands Lose Their Cunning

Here the future, fabled bird
that has migrated away from America,
nests, and breeds, and sings,

common as any sparrow.
- In Thai Binh (Peace) Province

a container of napalm:
and as I threw it in Nixon's face
and his crowd leapt back from the flames
...
It is
to this extremity

the infection of their evil

thrusts us . . .
- A Poem at Christmas, 1972, during the Terror-Bombing of North Korea


Part Five consists of five poems, seemingly unrelated...

all of these
dreamed of, woven, knit, mitered
into a vision named 'A Visit Home'
(as if there were a home I had,
beyond the houses I lived in, or those
I've lived in and hold
dimly in mind)
- Dream Inscape

More real than ever, as I move
in the world, and never out of it,
Solitude.
- The Way It Is

When I am the sky
a glittering bird
slashes at me with the knives of song.
- Cancion


Part Six consists of twelve poems, all of which seem to contribute to a narrative about a possible divorce and subsequent loneliness...

It is one in homespun
you hunger for
when you are lonesome
- The Woman

With dread she heard the letter
fall into the drop.
- Crosspurposes, i

Two letters passed each other, carried
north and south.
...
They are two songs
each in a different key,
two fables told
in different countries,
two pairs of eyes looking past each other
to different distances.
- Crosspurposes, ii

And if I coast, down toward home, spring evenings, silently,
a kind of song rising in me to encompass
Davis Square and the all-night
cafeteria and the pool hall,
it is childhood's song, surely no note is changed,
sung in Valentines Park or on steep streets in the map of my mind
in the hush of suppertime, everyone gone indoors.
Solitude within multitude seduced me early.
- Living Alone (I)

Some days, though,
living alone,
there's only knowledge of silence,
clutter of bells cobwebbed
in crumbling belfry,
words jaggéd,
in midutterance broken.
- Living Alone (II)

What magical denial
shall my life utter
to bring itself forth?
- Living Alone (III)

We have entered sadness
as one enters a mountain cloud.
- Cloud Poems, i. The Cloud

Yes, we need the heat
of imagination's sun
to cut through the bonds of cloud.

And oh, can the great and golden light
warm our flesh that has grown so cold?
- Cloud Poems, iii. The Cutting-beam

and I want you, Mitch, to step out with me into the dark garden,
for you're standing back of me too, taller than anyone;

but as the cold air comes in I turn toward you and you're
not there
- Don't You Hear That Whistle Blowin' . . .

We were Siamese twins.
Our blood's not sure
if it can circulate,
now we are cut apart.
Something in each of us is waiting
to see if we can survive
severed.
- Divorce

I suffer
less you pain than my
helplessness,

hoisted off the
earth of my energies like
a bug overturned,

feet waving
wild and feeble.
- Grief

We Smile.
After these months of pain we begin
to admit our new lived have begun
- Libation


Part Seven consists of five longer poems, related in one way or another to poetry and the poet...

In the infinite dictionary he discovers
gold grains of sand. Each has its twin
on some shore the other side of the world.
- Growth of a Poet, i

They fade; the flames
go on burning,
enduring.
- Growth of a Poet, ii

The answers pushing
boundaries over,
(those proud embankments),
the asking revealed.
- Growth of a Poet, iii

One at a time
books, when their hour is come
step out of the shelves.
- Growth of a Poet, iv

Coffee cups fall out of his hands,
doorknobs slip his grasp and
doors slam,
antique writing desks break under his
leaning elbows
- Growth of a Poet, v

To make a poem is to find
an old chair in the gutter
and bring it home
into the upstairs cave
- Growth of a Poet, vi

They desire
to practice the dance,
Secretly to prepare.
- Growth of a Poet, vii

The venom rises
from torn foot to
heart. Makes
a knot in the heart.
- Growth of a Poet, viii

On his one leg that aches
the poet
learns to stand firm
upholding
the round table of his
blank page.
When the wind blows
his wood
shall be tree again.
Shall stir,
shall sigh and sing.
- Growth of a Poet, x

And the poet - it's midnight, the room is half empty, soon
we must part -
the poet, his presence
ursine and kind, shifting his weight in a chair too small
for him,
quietly says, and shyly: "The Poet
never must lose despair."
- Conversation in Moscow


This part also contains to quotations that seem to contribute to Levertov's idea of what makes a poet...

"What is to give light must endure burning."
- Victor Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul
(quoted in Growth of a Poet, ii)

"Whatever has black sounds, has duende.
- Manuel Torres, quoted by Federico García Lorca
(quoted in Growth of a Poet, xi)

"The poet is at the disposal of his own night."
- Jean Cocteau
(quoted in 'The Poem Rising By Its Own Weight')


Part Eight consists of five poems, again seemingly unrelated...

That our love for each other, if need be,
give way to absence. And the unknown.
- Prayer for Revolutionary Love

Salt glitters
on our lips,
on ruffled paper. Soon
the words will fly on their torn strips
beyond vision.
- Voyage


Part Nine consists of six short poems, again seemingly unrelated...

Tasted (and spat out)
Satan's Boletus.
Delicious!
- Waving to the Devil

I asked a blind man the way east,
because I'd not seen him,
not looked before asking.
He smiled, and walked on,
sure of his felt way,
silent.
- Consulting the Oracle

Perhaps we humans
have wanted God most as witness
to acts of choice
made in solitude.
- Freedom

How seamed with lines of fate the hands
of women who sit at streetcorners
offering seeds and flowers.
How lively their conversation together.
How much of death they know.
I am tired of 'the fine art of unhappiness.'
- The Wealth of the Destitute

[Amandaklonsky]

oh it's just so beautiful.

[Annie Sand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Has some good moments, but a lot of the poetry falls back too easily on old cliches, be they political or spiritual. Maybe good for readers new to poetry?

[George Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Freeing of the Dust collects poems copyrighted by Denise Levertov between 1972 and 1975. Included are poems inspired by a trip to North Vietnam, and Levertov makes clear what her sympathies are. “In Thai Binh (Peace) Province” begins with “I’ve used up all my film on bombed hospitals, / bombed village schools, the scattered / lemon-yellow cocoons at the bombed silk factory.”

“Conversation in Moscow” posits a meeting of an I-narrator with characters designated “our interpreter,” “the poet,” “the biologist,” and “the historian.” The narrator says, in an aside the reader, “(I’ve been saying / I don’t see enough [italicized] communism here, no struggling toward / a classless society).”

The title poem, the penultimate selection, contrasts dust and water imagery and connects them to Ariel and Caliban from The Tempest.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first collection of Levertov’s, so take that as a filter for the review. Strong images and metaphors, and an interesting ability to work in both long and short forms. There’s some earnestly political mid-70s stuff that feels, well, dusty, but it’s a solid collection.

[Karsen De Jarnett · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was okay. I really really liked two of them. The rest weren't really my taste.

[Inverted · Rating 3 out of 5]

Denise Levertov is completely convinced of her own genius. In Conversation in Moscow, the most cafe-poet piece in The Freeing of the Dust, the I is abashed (abashed!) in being perceived (alas!) by another poet as a receptacle of doubts and longings, and therefore pure. It is as if the poem is her way of saying Look at me! I am my own poetry! But I am naive about it! Actually, I am surprised when someone else recognizes it!

I mean, being narcissistic is O.K. It's necessary in making poetry, because it is forceful and germinal and it runs so close to being delusional. And delusion is O.K. too, it's engaging. Unlike false modesty, which is always irritating, because poetry is often transparent enough to expose fake propositions. I would rather a crazy bitch of a poet who makes everything ugly with her vanity, than someone who sports a naiveté.

Levertov is not a bad poet. Her strength lies in nuance, in subtlety. It also stops there. When she tries to expand, her poems often become too caught up with Capturing The Deep And Subtle Truth to be of any current relevance. While I understand that there is a strong historical undercurrent in her verse, I see no point in using it as a measure of value. If anything, a poem must measure up to the complexity that it attempts to capture, must throw itself in the thick of things. Otherwise, it should leave history alone. This is the same problem I have with Cavafy's Complete Poems , and his hunky archaic muses. They're just documentation. Levertov talks about deaths, murderers, injustice, and her effect is clinical:

Cruel America,
when you mutilate our land and bodies,
it is your own soul you destroy,
not ours.
(Weeping Woman)

Perhaps her vantage point is from a safe distance, out of an afflicted bourgeoise guilt. Which would never translate well into poetry, unless its a complete mockery of that shallowness. In Levertov's verse, the guilt is recognized, and the recognition absolves. And damn if it gets any bourgeoise than that.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this collection, Levertov explores the personal and public themes that she has woven through her tapestries of work: the immorality of the Vietnam War, tangled relations with family and friends, the failures of so-called civilized society.

Favorite Poems:
“The Pilots”
“A Place of Kindness”
May Our Right Hands Lose atheist Cunning”
“In Thai Binh (Peace) Province”
“Goodbye to Tolerance”
“The Way It Is”
“Crosspurposes”
“Libation”
“Voyage”
“The Life of Others”

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Levertov's chapbook isn't so much an escape into the past (which I assumed, as it was published in 1972) but a vivid placement in the present. Her poems of the Vietnam War resonate because of the Iraq War today. When she writes "I hope they can truly be considered / victims of the middle America they come from ... then I must learn to distrust / my own preference for trusting people," I connected with her frustration, and perhaps we share the same misunderstanding of where so many U.S. citizens' profound ignorance of the rest of the world derives from.

Her poems about love and divorce reach deeply as well. Her Prayer for Revolutionary Love would fit right in to all the discussions about life and love and planning and travel and art exhibitions and independence and really the meaning of it all that some of my friends and I have spent hours analyzing late into the night lately.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the first half of this book years ago and then it got packed into the "not enough room in our New York apartment" stacks.

I really like the flow of Levertov's language in most of the poems in this collection, although some of them do feel a little too "dense" for my reading sensibilities - a problem lying more within the reader than with the writer, no doubt.

I was reminded of Sharon Doubiago's words and rythyms while reading.

I especially liked "Don't You Hear That Whistle Blowin'..."

[Yasaman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a collection of Denise Levertov's poetry tucked away on my bookshelf, an impulse buy from Shakespeare and Co. in Berkeley a few years ago based on how much I've liked her other poetry. The Freeing of the Dust didn't have any poems that hit me where I live, instead featuring a lot of poems about the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement. Nothing bad, but nothing earth-shattering either, and there was something strangely distancing about the poems dealing with the Vietnam War. Still, there's a clarity and forthrightness to Levertov's poetry that I love.

[A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Levertov but this one was really mixed for me. I think I've read enough of her to know I prefer her more introspective moments to her political ones - this probably has something to do with the "current events" she discusses having taken place in the 60s and 70s. Regardless, still a few gems in here that make this collection worth looking into if you are already a fan of Denise Levertov.

[Catsalive · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poetry & I don't get along terribly well but maybe that wasn't always the case. I enjoyed these much more when I was young. I have kept this book for 40 years & now, after one last reading, I can let it go. There are still some wonderful images here but I am a different person now.