DENISE LEVERTOV ~

DENISE LEVERTOV & CHARLES OLSON ~

DENISE LEVERTOV ~

DENISE LEVERTOV
A Poet's Life
by Dana Greene
University of Illinois Press, 2012

The tone, pacing and fulfillment of this biographer's portrait and study of an American poet is exquisite and accomplished. Even the design of the book and dust jacket photograph of Denise Levertov draws wonder. Don't hesitate.

DENISE LEVERTOV ~

I imagine someone will find something to pester about with this massive and holy beauty of a book, but I can't be bothered. Like I say, it's a beauty. The poet is long gone but certainly not to the memory of many of us who grew up with her books, issued one after another from New Directions (the faithful), and many of us knew Denise Levertov as friend, teacher, fellow contributor, activist, neighbor. We could even stretch it and say to many poets now in their late 50s to early 70s, who may recall a time when Levertov was a sort of earth mother poet to them, or sister. The poem below will just begin to show (but amply) her ability as mesmerizing storyteller — this poet who began to write her poems at age 5. And this poem has deep ingredients of Richard Jefferies roaming the same countryside, even the skilled wandering discipline of Williams (his longer poems; he will become a confidant and friend), Dorothy Wordsworth's journals, perhaps the balancing scales of Virginia Woolf. But it's all wickedly private/public Denise Levertov. As Eavan Boland makes note in her excellent introduction to this tome — you can sense the power of the poet right from the first line.

There's a lot going on here with this book. First, it's gorgeous coming into your hands, and almost heartbreaking to see such a devoted publisher as New Directions sticking to their guns with one of their poets . . . a woman poet, who never get enough big book attention. If they wanted to make a lasting monument, they have. It's over 1,000 pages true. Precious little waste, if any. The founder of New Directions, James Laughlin, is all throughout the book with his earnest for Levertov to be in his stable, after west-coast-both-feet-on-the-ground-genius Kenneth Rexroth introduced Levertov's poems to his poet/publisher friend. It was a good time for things to take off, and it did.

Later years brought this forever independent (Levertov) from no set school or sect, but her own, to Stanford, other parts west coast, and Seattle. Eavan Boland divides her time at Stanford and Dublin; scholars, other poets, students and a readership just carried on a momentum. Something the two editors of this book, and publisher, have handled well. The poet's individual books unfold in chronological order, along with extensive annotations and notes by Levertov herself on many of the books, when not poems. First lines are properly indicated as an index. It'll all come in time though, because you'll be holding the book in your two hands for awhile and not even wanting to open its leaves for a few moments. There's an absorbing ritual — a nearly forced will — that asks you to slow down, take a moment, and breathe in the apple you're about to bite. 

~ BA

________________

 A Map of the Western Part of the Country of Essex in England

Something forgotten for twenty years: though my fathers   

and mothers came from Cordova and Vitepsk and Caernarvon,   

and though I am a citizen of the United States and less a   

stranger here than anywhere else, perhaps,

I am Essex-born:

Cranbrook Wash called me into its dark tunnel,

the little streams of Valentines heard my resolves,

Roding held my head above water when I thought it was   

drowning me; in Hainault only a haze of thin trees

stood between the red doubledecker buses and the boar-hunt,   

the spirit of merciful Phillipa glimmered there.

Pergo Park knew me, and Clavering, and Havering-atte-Bower,

Stanford Rivers lost me in osier beds, Stapleford Abbots

sent me safe home on the dark road after Simeon-quiet evensong,

Wanstead drew me over and over into its basic poetry,

in its serpentine lake I saw bass-viols among the golden dead leaves,

through its trees the ghost of a great house. In

Ilford High Road I saw the multitudes passing pale under the   

light of flaring sundown, seven kings

in somber starry robes gathered at Seven Kings

the place of law

where my birth and marriage are recorded

and the death of my father. Woodford Wells

where an old house was called The Naked Beauty (a white   

statue forlorn in its garden)

saw the meeting and parting of two sisters,

(forgotten? and further away

the hill before Thaxted? where peace befell us? not once   

but many times?).

All the Ivans dreaming of their villages

all the Marias dreaming of their walled cities,

picking up fragments of New World slowly,

not knowing how to put them together nor how to join   

image with image, now I know how it was with you, an old map

made long before I was born shows ancient

rights of way where I walked when I was ten burning with desire

for the world's great splendors, a child who traced voyages   

indelibly all over the atlas, who now in a far country   

remembers the first river, the first

field, bricks and lumber dumped in it ready for building,   

that new smell, and remembers

the walls of the garden, the first light.

_______________________________

Denise Levertov

The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov

edited and annotated by Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey

New Directions 2013

 http://ndbooks.com/book/the-collected-poems

DENISE LEVERTOV ~

The Day the Audience Walked Out on Me, and Why  
 (May 8th, 1970, Goucher College, Maryland)




Like this it happened:
after the antiphonal reading from the psalms
and the dance of lamentation before the altar,
and the two poems, "Life at War" and "What Were They Like,"
I began my rap,
and said:

Yes, it is well that we have gathered
in this chapel to remember
the students shot at Kent State,

but let us be sure we know
our gathering is a mockery unless
we remember also
the black students shot at Orangesburg two years ago,
and Fred Hampton murdered in his bed
by the police only months ago.

And while I spoke the people
— girls, older women, a few men —
began to rise and turn
their backs to the altar and leave.

And I went on and said,
Yes, it is well that we remember
all of these, but let us be sure
we know it is hypocrisy
to think of them unless
we make our actions their memorial,
actions of militant resistance.

By then the pews were almost empty
and I returned to my seat and a man stood up
in the back of the quiet chapel
(near the wide-open doors through which
the green of May showed, and the long shadows of late afternoon)
and said my words
desecrated a holy place.

And a few days later
when some more students (black) were shot
at Jackson, Mississippi,
no one desecrated the white folks' chapel,
because no memorial was held.


1971

Duke University Press

Box 90660

Durham, NC 27708-0660

www.dukeupress.edu