Relearning the Alphabet

by Denise Levertov

1970 NEW DIRECTIONS HARDCOVER

Genres: Poetry

121 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

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

[Shankar · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent set of poems whose context will be understood I guess by re reading. I enjoyed the imagery of a multiple set of subjects.

Snail

Burden,grace,
artifice coiled
Brittle on my back, integral,

I thought to crawl
Out of you

Yearned for the worm’s
Lowly freedom that can go

Under earth and whose
Slow arrow pierces
The thick of dark

But in my shell
My life was

And when I knew it
I remembered

My eyes adept to witness
Air and harsh light

And look all ways

She has written many more such and I guess with each reading the learning changes. I hope to read more of her work.

[valerie slaughter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorites, in no particular order: The Cold Spring (We wanted/more of our life to live in us.), At David’s Grave (When we go, he goes with us/to be your hands that never/do violence, your eyes/that wonder, your lives/that daily praise life/by living it, by laughter.), An Interim (O language, mother of thought,/are you rejecting us as we reject you?), Mad Song (My madness is dear to me.), A Hunger (And being needed. Being loved for that./Being forgiven.), Not Yet (and if the summer spent/itself before I took it/into my life—?), Adam’s Complaint (Some people,/no matter what you give them,/still want the moon.), The Rain (There have been hands laid on my shoulders./What has been said to me,/how has my life replied?/The rain, the rain…), Souvenir d’amitié (She gave me/a share of her loneliness, her warmth, her flea.), July 1968 (A dark time we live in. One would think/there would be no summer.), A Tree Telling of Orpheus (But what we have lived/comes back to us.), Dialogue (The gods in us,/you said: what violence more brutish/than not to see them:), and Relearning the Alphabet (Lost in the alphabet/I was looking for/the word I can’t now say/(love)), and (our bed is/upon the earth/your soul is/in your body/your mouth/has found/my mouth once more/–I’m home.), and (Something in me that wants to cling/to /never,//wants to have been/wounded deeper/burned by the cold moon to cinder,), and (Relearn the alphabet,/relearn the world, the world/understood anew only in doing,).

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lesser-known title from a somewhat lesser-known poet, I was largely impressed by this compilation. The highlights were, to me, most of her Vietnam War poems. These felt very of-the-era, while simultaneously feeling painfully relevant even today. There were times I wanted a little more, but I’d definitely like to check out more of her work.

I’d recommend this to those that like activist poetry and ‘60s writing.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The collection is divided into five sections: ELEGIES; FOUR EMBROIDERIES; WANTING THE MOON; THE SINGER; and RELEARNING THE ALPHABET.

With ELEGIES, the poet explore themes related to politics and death (both pertinent considering their composition during the Vietnam War)...

Children in the laundromat
waiting while their mothers fold sheets.
A five-year-old boy addresses
a four-year-old girl. 'When I say,
Do you want some gum? say yes.'
'Yes . . .' 'Wait! - Now:
Do you want some gum?'
'Yes!' 'Well yes means no,
so you can't have any.'
He chews. He pops a big, delicate bubble at her.

O language, virtue
of man, touchstone
worn down by what
gross friction . . .

And,
'"It became necessary
to destroy the town to save it,"
a United States major said today.
He was talking about the decision
by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town
regardless of civilian casualities,
to rout the Vietcong.'

O language, mother of thought,
are you rejecting us as we reject you?

Language, coral island
accrued from human comprehensions,
human dreams,

you are eroded as war erodes us.
- An Interim

The poems of FOUR EMBROIDERIES have a fairy tale quality...

Together Rose Red and Rose White
sing to the bear;
it is a cradle song, a loom song,
a song about marriage, about
a pilgrimage to the mountains
long ago.
- An Embroidery, I

The poems of WANTING THE MOON have an ethereal quality. Here, the poet is preoccupied with dreams and with natural imagery...

Someone
figureskates brilliantly
across the lacquer lid of a box
where dreams are stored.
- Wings of a God

The poet makes an uncharacteristic allusion to Yeats. The influence of Yeats may not be evident in her style, but the poet is well-read and her love for poetry is evident...

'For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.'
W. B. Yeats

And I walked naked
from the beginning

breathing in
my life,
breathing out
poems,

arrogant in innocence.
- A Cloak

My favourite passages from the collection...

I who am loved by those who love me
for honesty,
to whom life was an honest breath
taken in good faith,
I've forgotten how to tell joy from bitterness.
- Mad Song

So I do smile.
What else to do?
Melancholy is boring.
- Not Yet

The poems of THE SINGER seem to follow the tone of the poems in WANTING THE MOON, with the exception of shorter poems, in which the tone more succinct, and thereby intensified...

Between chores -
hulling strawberries,
answering letters -
or between poems,

returning to the mirror
to see if I'm there.
- Keeping Track

Throughout the collection, the poet frequently incorporates dialogue which lends to the poems the feeling of something overheard. This in conjunction with imagery that is often unrelated creates the impression of a snapshot from the poet's life. We can read these poems and believe that, for the moment, we are seeing what she saw, hearing what she heard...

Along the tracks
counting
always the right foot awarded
the tie to step on
the left stumbling all the time on cinders

towards where
an old caboose
samples of paint were once tried out on
is weathering in a saltmarsh
to tints Giotto dreamed.

'Shall we
ever reach it?' 'Look -
the tracks take a curve.
We may
come round to it
if we keep going.'
- The Curve

'I am an object to you,' he said.
'My charm, what you call
my charm -
alien to me.'
'No! no!' she is crying.
- Dialogue

With RELEARNING THE ALPHABET, the poet does something entirely different, making this section the most interesting in the collection. She takes us through the alphabet and, more than "relearn" it, she seems to be relearning language and the world itself...

U
Relearn the alphabet,
relearn the world, the world
understood anew only in doing, under-
stood only as
looked-up-into out of earth,
the heart an eye looking,
the heart a root
planted in earth.
Transmutation is not
under the will’s rule.

W
Wisdom’s a stone
dwells in forgotten pockets—
lost, refound, exiled—
revealed again
in the palm of
mind’s hand, moonstone
of wax and wane, stone pulse.
- Relearning the Alphabet

The poet Robert Creeley has cited Denise Levertov as one of his influences. (In fact, he wrote the Preface to her Selected Poems .) Their connection and influence on each other's work is evident in two poems...

My face is my own.
My hands are my own.
My mouth is my own.
But I am not.
- Robert Creeley, "A Form of Women" (from For Love)

Vision will not be used.
Yearning will not be used.
Wisdom will not be used.
Only the vain will
strive to use and be used,
comes not to fire's core
but cinder.
- Denise Levertov, "Relearning the Alphabet"

[KJ Shepherd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really quite lovely. The role of repetition in phrases, of merry-go-round comparisons, of bursts of clear meter--the sudden earnest verses that pierce right through. A person at midlife making sense of their role in the world and bigger giant changes, while also getting lost in the beauty of knowing less and less: very important to me at this moment in my life.

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

Anti-war activist Levertov is on fire in this collection, speaking as the conscience of a nation that has lost its moral compass.

Favorite Poems:
“At David’s Grave”
“Despair”
“An Interim”
“A Cloak”
“Somebody Trying”
“The Open Secret”

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. Lovely poems, ranging from songs for Vietnam to drawings from classical fairy tales, but these could stand to be a bit more stark, as we see in some of her later work.

[Dorie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this volume of poems....

[Humphrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional. The title piece is, of course, a defining achievement. A sequence of excellent political poems - The Gulf, Biafra, The Heart - established an intensity of purpose early on. Amid this horror there are moments and beauty and hope, like the incredible Not Yet or Snail. Other poems I quite liked include Dream, The Rain, July 1968, and Equilibrium. Is this Levertov's best single volume? Quite possibly.

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

" Absence
an absolute
presence
calling forth
the person (the poet)
into desperate continuance, toward
fragments of light."
(from "Dialog")

[Madeline Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderful, wonderful. a bit beyond my scope to accurately describe but the repetition of themes and phrases of longing, knowing, nature and the self, all under an anti-war lens—what a gem of a collection. found it for $3 at a used bookstore visiting my alma mater and i'm so happy i got it

[Heather Laaman · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Hallie Lauinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Absence
an absolute
presence
calling forth
the person (the poet)”

[chantal Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Along with the Nabokov book, Jeremy gave me this book.