All About Books discussion

Our Seasonal Poet for Spring will be Denise Levertov, a British born American Poet who died in 1997. Over the last year, several of her poems have been posted and discussed in both the general Poetry Chat as well as part of our Monday Poem. You can find two of them here: 'The Depths' and 'Living'

For more information on the poet and some more of her poetry I recommend the Poetry Foundation

I am unfamiliar with this poet, except for those that have been posted here. Anyone have a recommendation of which book I should start with?

I too so far have only read individual poems by her, but I think for me it will be either Sands of the Well or Poems, 1968-1972 depending on what I can best get a hold of.

On the Brainpickings website, if you search for Levertov, you will find a link to her reading four of her poems.

I hadn't heard of her either, perhaps I should give her a try as she was born in Essex and authors here are hard to come across (even though I believe she lived most of her adult life in America)

My library has a copy of 'new selected poems' by her, so that's the one I'll pick up.

Leslie, the best book is hard to say because she's changed a lot over the years. The very early poems are a bit more formal (not in a bad way!), maybe it would be better to say they were very focused on the rhythms of speech. I can really see why William Carlos Williams was so enamored with her poetry. Like him, she started out with a wonderful ear for speech rhythms and with many similar concerns.

In the 1970's, she touched on politics very often, particularly the war in Vietnam, civil rights, etc.

Then, later in life, she moved more and more toward Christian mysticism, though her mysticism was also very strongly rooted in the magic and wonder of the natural world.

I loved so many of her books. A selected poems might not be a bad choice at first to see what eras of her poetry you're drawn to most.

I'm not at home to look at my bookshelf, but off the top my head, some of her books I really loved:

Evening Train: Poetry

Sands of the Well

The Jacob's Ladder

Thanks Greg! I will look and see what my library has.

My pleasure Leslie! I'm very excited Levertov was chosen and looking forward to discussing her work! :)

For people still trying to choose what to read, I've been leafing through all the Levertov books on my read physical shelves. These are the ones that I've read in order of publication that are still on my shelf:

The Jacob's Ladder (poem copyrights 1958-1961)
Footprints (1962, 1970-1972)
Oblique Prayers: New Poems with 14 Translations from Jean Joubert (1981-1984)
Breathing the Water (1984-1987)
A Door in the Hive (1984-1989)
Evening Train: Poetry (1990-1992)

All of them have some gems. and all have repeated motifs and similar concerns - a careful observation of the natural world, spiritual & philosophical questioning, occasional religious motifs & stories, and often a strong yearning for justice. Different books have a different flavor though because different concerns take precedence.

This time around, I'm particularly loving the quiet maturity in much of Evening Train: Poetry!

Both Footprints and Oblique Prayers: New Poems with 14 Translations from Jean Joubert by contrast have a more passionate feel, sometimes even angry; several of those poems are political in concern, but there are plenty of non-political poems even in those books.

I'll post a few poems from different books when I get a chance so people can get a taste of the variety!

Here's one I like from Evening Train: Poetry, a straightforward and beautiful observation of the natural world in a sequence of simple, perfectly chosen words:

HERON II

Elegantly gray, the blue heron
rises from perfect stillness on wide wings,
    flies a few beats
  sideways,
    trails his feet in the lake,
  and rises again to circle
from marker to marker (the posts
that show where the bottom shelves downward)
choosing:
and lands on the floating dock where the gulls cluster--

a tall prince come down from the castle to walk,
proud and awkward, in the market square,
while squat villagers
break off their deals
and look askance.

And this one captures the denser, lusher language and more philosophical feel of The Jacob's Ladder. I really love this book:

NIGHT ON HATCHET COVE

The screendoor whines, clacks
shut.   My thoughts crackle
with seaweed-seething diminishing
flickers of phosphorus.  Gulp
of a frog, plash
of herring leaping;
    interval;
squawk of gull disturbed, a splashing;
pause
while silence pauses for the breaking
bark of a seal: but silence.
    Then
only your breathing. I'll
be quiet too. Out
stove, out lamp, let
night cut the question with profound
unanswer, sustained
echo of our unknowing

And here's a more political one from Oblique Prayers: New Poems with 14 Translations from Jean Joubert. There's poems about the American involvement with the dictatorship in El Salvador in both this book and A Door in the Hive, poems about the Vietnam War in Footprints, and poems about the Gulf War in Evening Train: Poetry, but this particular poem is a more general one about poets as Witnesses to world events:

VOCATION

I have been listening, years now,
to last breaths - martyrs dying
passionately
  in open blood,
  in closed cells:

to screams and surprised silence
of children torn from green grass
into the foul bite
  of the great mower.

From a long way off
I listen, I look
with the eyes and ears concealed within me.
Ears and eyes of my body
know as I know:
I have no vocation to join the nameless great,

only to say to others, Watch! Hear them!
Through them alone
we keep our title, human,

word like an archway, a bridge, an altar,
(Sworn enemies
answering phrase to phrase,
used to sing in the same key, imagine! -
used to pick up the furious song and
sing it through
to the tonic resting place, the chord,
however harsh,
of resolution.)

Nowadays
I begin to hear a new sound:
a leaf seems as it slowly
twirls down
earthward
to hum,

a candle, silently
melting beneath its flame,
seems to implore
attention, that it not burn its life
unseen.

OK, yes, I've gone a little crazy - Levertov does that to me. Last one for now, I promise. :) This one is a more spiritual one from Evening Train: Poetry. It is also one of my favorites; stick with it to the end - it takes several turns. The last stanza is particularly gorgeous and also, I think, very wise. Over her life, Levertov gradually moved from the more animistic vision of The Jacob's Ladder to a sort of Christian mysticism expressed so well in this lovely poem:

THE TIDE

Where is the Giver to whom my gratitude
rose? In this emptiness
there seems no Presence.

*

How confidently the desires
of God are spoken of!
Perhaps God wants
something quite different.
Or nothing, nothing at all.

*

Blue smoke from small
peaceable hearths ascending
without resistance in luminous
evening air.
Or eager mornings - waking
as if to a song's call.
Easily I can conjure
a myriad images
of faith.
Remote. They pass
as I turn a page.

*

Outlying houses, and the train's rhythm
slows, there's a signal box,
People are taking their luggage
down from the racks.
Then you wake and discover
you have not left
to begin the journey.

*

Faith's a tide, it seems, ebbs and flows responsive
to action and inaction.
Remain in stasis, blown sand
stings your face, anemones
shrivel in rock pools no wave renews.
Clean the littered beach, clear
the lines of a forming poem,
the waters flood inward.
Dull stones again fulfill
their glowing destinies, and emptiness
is a cup, and holds
the ocean.

I feel like I've made a new friend. Thank you so much for the introduction to Denise Levertov here.

I've read all the individual poems shared in this thread directly or thru links. I've perused my public library's shelves for their Levertov offerings, and hope to check out and read several this spring.

Fantastic Tejas Janet! It's my pleasure & I'm looking forward to discussing her work with you! :D

I have a soft spot for Levertov - I didn't really know her of course, but at readings she struck me as a sweet, thoughtful person. And other poets have written about her kindness to them. If I recall correctly, Pat Mora talked in her memoir about Levertov offering her a glass of water when she was nervous & new to speaking. That's how I think of her. :)

Also, I have such fond memories of scouring used book stores for her books in the early 1990's before the Internet made things easy to find. Each book I found in those days was cause for celebration!

While at the library today, I picked up This Great Unknowing: Last Poems (which was the only Levertov available without interlibrary loan). It looks to be a short book so I will probably request another book before long...

That particular book does have some good poems Leslie, but it was published posthumously; so all the poems were not polished into their final forms by Levertov prior to publication. Also, the poems were not chosen nor the order arranged by her as in her earlier books. So keep in mind that other books might have a bit more polish. Regardless, some poems in the book (I'm thinking of one in particular) were great!

Thanks Greg. I just realized that this morning when I read the blurb. I did like the first few poems :)

I really like this short poem:

"Ancient Stairway"

Footsteps like water hollow
the broad curves of stone
ascending, descending
century by century.
Who can say if the last
to climb these stairs
will be journeying
downward or upward?

(from "This Great Unknowing")

Such a fantastic thought/image/idea at the center of this poem. So like Levertov, that sense of mystery the poem evokes for me.

Greg wrote: "OK, yes, I've gone a little crazy - Levertov does that to me. Last one for now, I promise. :) This one is a more spiritual one from Evening Train: Poetry. It is also one of my favorit..."

From this poem, I especially love the line:

"Then you wake and discover
you have not left
to begin the journey."

Also "... emptiness is a cup, and holds the ocean."

Tejas Janet, both of those portions you cite are parts I especially like too. What a wonderful way to end the poem, on that line!

Love it!

I have finished her posthumous collection, This Great Unknowing: Last Poems. While I didn't dislike any of the poems, only a few made a strong impression on me. I am curious now to try one of her earlier books -- I think I will ask for The Jacob's Ladder through interlibrary loan...

I had exactly the same reaction to that particular book Leslie. I think that as she hadn't had the chance to fully polish the poems, some of the magic was missing. Some of them read like good poems originally written in another language that suffered from an uninspiring translation if that makes sense. I could feel a kernel of magic but it was buried and obscured.

I am reading Sands of the Well right now. I had bought it some months ago at a used bookshop in Oregon when I went to my friend's wedding there. I'm enjoying it so far.

Leslie, what do you think of this one, from Evening Train: Poetry I believe.

http://www.betterlivingthroughbeowulf...

A very simple one, but it speaks to me right now with everything going on in my life.

I love the imagery in that one Greg. Feels a bit sad...

For anyone who might be interested in reading one or two of Levertov's poems without the bother of getting a whole collection from the library, there are several websites which can be used. Jenny mentioned The Poetry Foundation in her first post. I recently have been using bestpoems so here is the link for Levertov's poems there:

http://www.best-poems.net/denise_leve...

Still killing time until I hold my copy of Poems, 1968-1972 in hands, so will go and look at this link now. Thanks Leslie!

"Of Being" by Denise Levertov seems very uplifting to me with the need to dance, kneel, acknowledge the mystery of life.

That's how I read it too Tejas Janet! There will always be losses in life, sooner or later great losses (and that part is sad), but every day there's also the great communion and mystery of daily life. That's the consolation. The poem doesn't feel hopeless at all. On the contrary, to me it feels uplifting as you say. It feels like a celebration of what is precious in life.

I got a copy of The Jacob's Ladder through interlibrary loan yesterday. I am looking forward to seeing how this earlier book compares with the posthumous collection I read.

I am almost finished with The Jacob's Ladder. I like this better than the previous book of hers I read but she won't become one of my favorite poets -- sorry Greg!

I have noticed that poetry even more than fiction is very much a matter of personal taste. Or perhaps a better way to express what I mean is to say that the appeal of poems is usually to a narrower audience than that of novels.

I think that's true Leslie about personal taste - poetry is a very intimate thing. It's good you gave her a try! :)

I like this one a lot (it comes with a ...what's the word in English? Pre-...something by Yeats)

A Cloak
'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.

But of the song-clouds my breath made
in cold air

a cloak has grown,
white and,

where here a word
there another

froze, glittering,
stone-heavy.

A mask, I had not meant
to wear, as if of frost,
covers my face.

Eyes looking out,

a longing silent at song's core

and I quite like this very short one:

Furthermore

Between chores—

hulling strawberries,
answering letters—

or between poems,

returning to the mirror
to see if I’m there.

Jenny wrote: "I like this one a lot (it comes with a ...what's the word in English? Pre-...something by Yeats)

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

And I walked naked
from the beg..."

A good one Jenny! I particularly like "A mask, I had not meant / to wear, as if of frost / covers my face."

Do you know which original collection it's from?

It's from Relearning the Alphabet!

Thanks Jenny! :)

This little quote, from the poem "Relearning the Alphabet" struck a chord with me:

The door I flung my weight against
was constructed to open out
towards me

I've just finished reading Poems, 1968-1972. Interesting to see how her focus, her style shifts in this period. Some of her poems are spiritual in tone, some tender meditations on nature. Some are miniature portraits of loved-ones, of friends, of authors, lot's of them actually read as if she was talking to someone.
A very large portion of these poems though, especially from 1970 until 1972 are ones where the political activist Levertov shines through. They centre mostly around the subject of the Vietnam war. A part of the collection actually reads as if she was using the poems as a journal, to document all that was happening. Some are more stylized in tone.
This one from my favourite collection Footprints I find very hard to shake:

Scenario
by Denise Levertov

The theater of war. Offstage
a cast of thousands weeping.

Left center, well-lit, a mound
of unburied bodies,

or parts of bodies. Right
near some dead bamboo that serves as wings,

a whole body, on which
a splash of napalm is working.

Enter the Bride.

She has one breast, one eye
half of the scalp is bald.

She hobbles towards center front.
Enter the Bridegroom,

a young soldier, thin, but without
visible wounds. He sees her.

Slowly at first, then faster and faster
he begins to shudder, to shudder,

to ripple with shudders. Curtain.