Picture of author.

Denise Levertov (1923–1997)

Author of Selected Poems

76+ Works 2,757 Members 24 Reviews 14 Favorited

About the Author

Born in Essex, England, Denise Levertov became a U.S. citizen after her marriage to Mitchell Goodman, the writer who was indicted, with Benjamin Spock and the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, for his antiwar activities. She came to New York to live in 1948. Levertov acknowledges that her writing was show more influenced by William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan. After her first book, The Double Image (1946), was published in England in 1946, she did not produce another volume until 1957, when City Lights brought out Here and Now. In 1961 she was poetry editor for the Nation, and in 1965 she received the grant in literature from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Her essays collected in The Poet in the World (1973) and Light Up the Cave are written with a penetrating intelligence. Winner of numerous awards and prizes, she is a poet of reverence and fierce moral drive. Denise Levertov died December 20, 1997. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Portriat of Denise Levertov taken by Elsa Dorfman on Flagg St, Cambridge, MA

Works by Denise Levertov

Selected Poems (1986) 211 copies
Breathing the Water (1987) 133 copies
This Great Unknowing (1999) 113 copies
Poems 1968-1972 (1987) 110 copies
Poems, 1960-1967 (1983) 109 copies
Sands of the Well (1996) 92 copies
In Praise of Krishna: Songs from the Bengali (1967) — Joint Author — 84 copies
The Sorrow Dance: Poems (1966) 83 copies
Relearning the Alphabet (1656) 78 copies
The Jacob's Ladder (1961) 74 copies
New & Selected Essays (1992) 70 copies
O Taste and See (1964) 68 copies
Door in the Hive (1656) 59 copies
Light Up the Cave (1981) 59 copies
Oblique Prayers (1984) 59 copies
Life in the Forest (1978) 58 copies
Candles in Babylon (1982) 56 copies
Footprints. (1971) 53 copies
Poems 1972-1982 (2001) 49 copies
To Stay Alive (1971) 47 copies
New Selected Poems (2003) 18 copies
Mary Randlett Landscapes (2007) 18 copies
Here and Now (1956) 10 copies
Seasons of Light (1988) 8 copies
Overland to the Islands (1958) 7 copies
The double image (1946) 4 copies
Denise Levertov (1994) 2 copies
Embroideries 2 copies
5 Poems 2 copies
A Wanderer's Daysong (1981) 2 copies
Feet (1997) 1 copy
Three poems 1 copy
Poems 1 copy
Blue Africa 1 copy
Window-Blind 1 copy
Daybreak 1 copy

Associated Works

The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (2000) — Contributor — 1,254 copies
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 915 copies
The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry (1990) — Contributor — 749 copies
Contemporary American Poetry (1962) — Contributor, some editions — 384 copies
Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women's Spirituality (2000) — Contributor — 370 copies
City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology (1995) — Contributor — 352 copies
Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (1993) — Contributor — 332 copies
The Portable Sixties Reader (2002) — Contributor — 324 copies
The New American Poetry 1945-1960 (1960) — Contributor — 317 copies
The Penguin Book of Women Poets (1978) — Contributor — 297 copies
The Best American Poetry 1999 (1999) — Contributor — 208 copies
The Art of Losing (2010) — Contributor — 197 copies
The Best American Poetry 1997 (1997) — Contributor — 166 copies
American Religious Poems: An Anthology (2006) — Contributor — 162 copies
The Best American Poetry 1993 (1993) — Contributor — 128 copies
Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals (1998) — Contributor — 122 copies
No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (1973) — Contributor — 122 copies
Poems from the Women's Movement (2009) — Contributor — 105 copies
Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths (1684) — Contributor — 68 copies
The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food and Drink (2012) — Contributor — 63 copies
The Ecopoetry Anthology (2013) — Contributor — 48 copies
Poetry (1962) — Contributor — 46 copies
Summer: A Spiritual Biography of the Season (2005) — Contributor; Contributor — 37 copies
Where is Vietnam? American poets respond; an anthology of contemporary poems (1967) — Contributor, some editions — 33 copies
Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age (1995) — Contributor — 30 copies
AQA Anthology (2002) — Author, some editions — 19 copies
Wonders: Writings and Drawings for the Child in Us All (1980) — Contributor — 18 copies
Poetry in Crystal (1963) — Contributor — 15 copies
Modern Women Poets (2005) — Contributor — 13 copies
Fairy Poems (2023) — Contributor — 13 copies
EVERGREEN REVIEW: VOL. 3, NO. 9: SUMMER 1959 (1959) — Contributor — 12 copies
Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (2018) — Contributor — 9 copies
Bright Poems for Dark Days: An Anthology for Hope (2021) — Contributor — 9 copies
Men and Women: The Poetry of Love (1970) — Contributor — 8 copies
Epitaphs for Lorine — Contributor — 5 copies
Seventh Street (1961) — Introduction — 4 copies
Peace or perish : a crisis anthology — Contributor — 3 copies
The Buffalo Sequence (1977) — Introduction, some editions — 2 copies
Poetry Magazine Vol. 109 No. 6, March 1967 — Contributor — 2 copies
In'hui, No.9 — Contributor — 1 copy

Tagged

1960s (32) 20th century (99) American (75) American literature (138) American poetry (137) anthology (810) collection (61) Denise Levertov (52) drama (39) education (24) essays (125) feminism (66) fiction (119) grief (25) history (50) Library of America (31) literary criticism (60) literature (283) memoir (29) nature (91) non-fiction (195) own (46) poems (66) poetics (62) poetry (2,969) poetry anthology (108) politics (25) read (53) reference (74) religion (66) short stories (35) spirituality (105) textbook (76) to-read (253) unread (37) USA (29) women (167) women writers (27) women's studies (68) writing (104)

Common Knowledge

Members

Reviews

I rejoice to have found a poet I enjoy as much as I do Mary Oliver.
 
Flagged
Treebeard_404 | 2 other reviews | Jan 28, 2024 |
Poems in this volume are about peacemaking from Vietnam to the death squads in El Salvador to the first Gulf War.
 
Flagged
PendleHillLibrary | Oct 27, 2022 |
I find my first encounter with Denise Levertov somehow ordinary. As elusive as some of the poems are, chronologically arranged, some does not stir enough of anything to leave a mark. Though this also reflects deeply on a number of virtues and the sublimity of nature, its mysticism is not as personally transcendent as let's say Mary Oliver's whose works bower places for me despite my non-belief.

** "What patience a landscape has, like an old horse,
head down in its field.
Grey days,
air and fine rain cling, become one, hovering till at last,
languidly, rain relinquishes that embrace, consents
to fall. What patience a hill, a plain,
a band of woodland holding still, have, and the slow falling
of grey rain...Is it blind faith? Is it
merely a way to deeply rest? Is the horse
only resigned, or has it
some desireable knowledge, an enclosed meadow
quite other than its sodden field,
which patience is the key to? Has it already,
within itself, entered the sunwarmed shelter?"
— PATIENCE

(I very much loved Patience, Visitation Overflow, and Memory demands so much.)

As a collection I also struggle to associate it with anything which is one of my criteria in placing a poetry collection in high regard, some has softly torn a part of my soul: Szymborska's Here reminds me of the fragility of existence, O'Hara's Lunch Poems makes me fall in love with the city life again amidst the weight and demand, Neruda's The Captain's Verses (or any poetry collection of his) caresses me with sensuality and adoration whilst both Plath's Ariel: The Restored Edition (not the one rearranged by the notorious Ted Hughes!) and Bukowski's You Get So Alone At Times It Just Makes Sense let me taste the familiar grit, rawness, and dirt of living (and personal demons) every time. Nonetheless, when Levertov's poem is lucid and vivid it is a moment in itself. This does not shy me away with Levertov's works at all but rather determines me to find a collection of hers which will wholeheartedly speak to me.

Other noteworthy lines:

** "Perhaps through a lifetime what I've desired
has always been to return
to that endless giving and receiving, the wholeness
of that attention,
that once-in-a-lifetime
secret communion."
— from FIRST LOVE

** "Westering sun a mist of gold
between solemnities of crowded vertical
poplar twigs. The mountain's
wester slow is touched
weightlessly with what will be, soon,
the afterglow."
— MID-DECEMBER

** " [...] Nostalgia
comes if it must, but is not for borrowing.
I see, I know, the desecration, I taste
the degrading sickly bile of that knowledge —
but I did not witness flower or fruit,
a specific locus, an ancestral ground.
What I hold are the links the mind
forges between a vanished field of imagined trees
and their peers remembered, the shine
of stolen cherries, far off
in time and in place; and also by now perhaps
vanished, that field built over."
— from ALIENATION IN SILICON VALLEY
… (more)
½
 
Flagged
lethalmauve | 2 other reviews | Jan 25, 2021 |
I got this collection because I was really floored by a poem from it, however upon rereading I couldn't place which poem it was. Levertov vacillates between metaphysical musing and relaying more concrete social realities and concerns. The space where these overlap captured my interest most, however there were not as many of these moments as I would've hoped for.
 
Flagged
b.masonjudy | 2 other reviews | Sep 5, 2020 |

Awards

You May Also Like

Associated Authors

Statistics

Works
76
Also by
57
Members
2,757
Popularity
#9,302
Rating
4.0
Reviews
24
ISBNs
89
Languages
3
Favorited
14

Charts & Graphs