Oblique Prayers: Poetry

by Denise Levertov

Over the years, Denise Levertov's poetry has moved ever more deeply into the realm of meditation, while yet speaking with the familiar voice of "the poet in the world." Oblique Prayers is arranged in four thematic sections that, taken together, work toward a mature philosophy in equal harmony with public activism and private reflection. A personal mood links the poems of “Decipherings.” In “Prisoners," the poet addresses the continuing horrors of our dark genocide, imperialism, impending nuclear holocaust––human degradation in brutal political guise. Levertov is an accomplished translator. With "Fourteen Poems by Jean Joubert," she introduces English-speaking readers to a contemporary French poet whose work is remarkably akin to her own. "Of God and of the Gods," the final section of the book, is informed by a transcendent lyricism that can equate in a breath "a day of spring, a needle's eye."

Genres: Poetry

87 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 1984

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

[Mattea Gernentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

August 2023:

I was going through my bookshelf and ended up tossing this collection in my tote bag because I was undecided—to keep or let go. What a blessing to reread Levertov as my train passed through sun-tinged hills, the close of day. I feel time too readily, slipping from me or accumulating in malaise. By the North Sea, I thumbed (small miracle?) first to the words of this poem (titled, roughly translated from French, "The End of Summer"): "Time / which will / take us / we take / sometimes / by the tail / like a handsome blue / lizard which deftly / breaks itself off / For one wild moment / it gleams / between our fingers / high crest / of dream / of marvel / (Thus it is / with you, Love, / and with the poem)" (47). Sorrow like a knife, poetry like pharmakon. On such days and others, I see life and think stubbornly "beautiful, beautiful," gazing up at constellations of leaves and swooping birds. Meanwhile, people pass like shadows.

"Dry wafer, / sour wine. / This day I see / God's in the dust, / not sifted / out from confusion" (74).

March 2022:

"Each morning, making tea, / I think of my dead friend. / ...Spring, summer, autumn, winter: / each season brings / its particular birds, whom I feed with crumbs. / ...I am alone, I write nothing, / I thank / the gods for this great breadth / of empty light" (The Poet's Late Autumn, 61).

soft girl spring (n.): getting overdressed to go sit in the park's sunshine, eat a clementine, and read Denise Levertov with misty eyes

"All we'd thought gone / into ashes, / clay, / deep night—" (Another Revenant, 28).

Oblique Prayers is immersed in the beauty of dreaming and remembering, finding "a certain delicacy in desolation" (12). Levertov captures a vision of redemptive beauty in the broken world.

"And others I loved— / what were their kingdoms? / What songs did I sing of them, / and gazed from what high windows / toward their borders? / I journeyed / onward, my road always / drawing me further" (Lovers (I), 16).

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

So there I was, standing in the poetry section of the library, with no more idea what I was doing there or looking for other than the resolution to "read more poetry" running through my mind. I'd done no research, I'd put no poetry on my hold list, I was just standing there, hoping for inspiration to jump out at me. A few books were picked up and placed back, on the grounds that they were giant anthologies, and my stack for checking out was already towering to a ridiculous height. Finally, I saw this book, and recognizing Levertov from my Panhala poetry email list, I grabbed it and moved on.

When I first started reading, it was clear that I'd forgotten how to read poetry. I kept finishing poems and thinking, "Okay, that was nice, but what was the point?" But soon I was drawn in by the steel hooks in the section "Prisoners," about the horrors of brutal regimes in South America, massacres in the name of religions in the Middle East, the proliferation of nuclear weapons... but before we lose hope, Levertov reassures us with her translations of Jean Joubert's poetry from the French, and a final, more lyrical section, "Of God and of the Gods."

While this probably is not a book I'll feel compelled to own, it did reaffirm my resolution to read more poetry.

[Jennifer Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smart and graceful, Levertov's poems are meditations on what is possible in a world of compassion, and what comprises darkness in the same. As ever, her language is drenched in lyrical grace, and seemingly effortless. Some of the poems here are spiritual, some concrete. Some of them are difficult and striking, others straightforward. All together, though, the collections rings with soulful engagement with the world, and any poetry reader will find something to love here.

Well worth the read.

[Book Child]

beautiful

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. Levertov divides the book into four thematic sections, and I must admit that I liked her religious and nature poems much more than her political ones.

[Bill Keefe · Rating 4 out of 5]

another wonderful read. not as overwhelmed as I was by Last Poems but perhaps because I was getting it on the rebound

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

IU've been thinking for a while that I should revisit Levertov's later poems. When I was young I was devoted to her early experimental stuff; she still seems the best poet to assimilate the WCWilliams influence. And I admired her political poems of the sixties and seventies, even if they occasionally feel a bit dated now. And I loved her turn to nature poems, although she didn't seem as accomplished as others. And then she lost me entirely in the eighties and nineties with her turn to religious and devotional poems. I always suspected my views would be entirely different now, and was not surprised when they were.

I loved this book. She herself tells us the four divisions -- an exploration of death, the politics of the moment, some translations of Jourbert, and devotional poems. I absolutely loved the first section and the last section. I don't (yet?) feel her need to explore the God idea, but I am much more sympathetic to it.

But it is great to see her work with line, and the tension she gets there. And there remains surprises. For instance, who knew she had a friendship and long acquaintance with James Wright. I had stupidly put them in different circles that didn't intersect. Here's the beginning of her poem "Presence" from the first section:

Sunlight in Ohio, touching
frostbitten stubblefields
and the cabbagy yards, strewn
[. }with rusting downhill racers and
[. ] abandoned rabbit hutches,
of small frame houses near the railroad . . .

The spirit
of Jim Wright is strong here,

so strong it comes through into the train,
through the thick pane.

[Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I know this happiness
is provisional:

the looming presences —
great suffering, great fear —

withdraw only
into peripheral vision:

but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:

this need to dance,
this need to kneel:
this mystery:"

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two or three poems really resonated with me. The translated poems by a different author did not at all.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm embarrassed to say it, but I just don't "get" Levertov's poetry - and I've really tried. I have admired her social stands on things through the years (against the Viet Nam War, for instance), and I want to like her poetry, but I don't. Why does it have to be so inaccessible? My copy of this book is special to me. I had the good fortune of having dinner with her one time here in Santa Barbara when she came to lecture at UCSB. We went to the old Mimosa Restaurant on De La Vina Street, where, looking out the window, she remarked on the interesting dog washing salon across the street. She was very mild, almost meek. When I asked her why she came to Santa Barbara to speak, she answered "the money - I needed it." Finally, at the end of the dinner, much to the dismay to the UCSB Librarian, I asked her if she ever signed any of her books for fans. She said, "of course," and I pulled out my stack of 7 volumes. She signed them all, but in one of the books, she did something of an opus and I think I was able to see the mind of a poet at work (and I may have the only copy of an unpublished Levertov poem):
"Signed for Bob Bason
at the dinner table
at the Mimosa*
in Santa Barbara
in April 1990
after a reading
before a dinner,
yum yum,
by Denise Levertov
*across from
"Dogs Beautiful"

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

While poetry is not my favorite kind of writing, there are a few poets who write in a way that I respond over and over. Levertov is one of those writers, Gary Snyder, Federico Garcia Lorca, Charles Olson, e.e. cummings, Adrienne Rich, Wanda Coleman are others.

The best thing about this particular book of poetry was when I opened it to read WATCHING DARK CIRCLE because it was a film that friends Chris and Judy had made.