Denise Levertov 1923-1997
In her final interview, a couple of months before she died, Denise Levertov discussed her essay "Some Affinities of Content," with Nicholas O'Connell particularly concerning the Northwest Poets' attention to nature as a way to submerge their individual ego. She is asked if her approach to poetry involves a spiritual quest. She says it is, and then she continues :
"...optimism is a twentieth-century repeat of attitudes in the nineteenth century, when they thought that steam, electricity, and telephones were going to make for some kind of utopia. There's a lot of dependence on technology today, and a willful ignorance that it's messing up resources... [o]ur ethical development does not match our technological development. This sense of spiritual hunger is something of a counterforce or unconscious reaction to all that technological euphoria."(1)
Denise Levertov was born October 23, 1923 in Ilford, Essex, England. Her father was a Hasidic Jew who converted to Christianity and became a Anglican parson. Her mother was Welsh and read Willa Cather, Dickens, Tolstoy and Conrad. Denise was home schooled and became interested in writing early, although she studied and intended to pursue ballet. She later said WWII changed her plans. To avoid conscription (women as well as men were required to serve in England,) She became a nurse during WWII.
After publication of her first book in 1946, she was recognized as one of the New Romantics. But after marrying American writer Mitchell Goodwin she moved to the US and settled in New York. There she became acquainted with the transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau. She also developed a friendship with William Carlos Williams, and made pilgrimages to visit him.
In 1965 Poetry published her essay "Some Notes on Organic Form." in it she discusses her theory of poetics as being a "crystallization" of a "constellation" of perceptions within the poet at the time of a precipitating poetic experience. She says the poet is "brought to speech:"
"Suppose theres the sight of the sky through a dusty window, birds and clouds and bits of paper flying through the sky, the sound of music from his radio, feelings of anger and love and amusement roused by a letter just received, the memory of some long-past thought...[ t]his is only a rough outline of a possible moment in a life. But the condition of being a poet is that periodically such a cross section, or constellation, of experiences (in which one or another element may predominate) demands, or wakes in him this demand: the poem. "(2)
In a 1984 interview with Sybil Estess, Levertov speaks of her political awakening from apathy to revolutionary. (3) She speaks of becoming politically active through pacifism first. She says:
"You will remember that there was actually no antiwar movement during the Korean War comparable to the one against the war in Vietnam. I shared that apathy, I'm afraid. But I began to participate in antinuclear demonstrations back in New York in the "ban the bomb" period. I was a convinced pacifist for a number of those years. Then I became more and more politically involved with the antiwar movement concerning Vietnam, and I began to feel that being a pacifist was an unbearably smug position to take. I felt self-righteous. I realized that there was a connection between the Vietnamese people who were struggling for self-preservation and between people's struggle for self-determination in all places, and with racism. So I gave up my pacifism at that point and became more revolutionary. "(3)
Denise Levertov died of Lymphoma on December 20,1997.
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Text of poems read can be found:
Clouds: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171233
Everything That Acts Is Actual: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171228
Come Into Animal Presence: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=17534
Life at War: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=181968
News Report, September 1991(4): http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=180095
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Webliography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Levertov
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/41
http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/poets/g_l/levertov/life.htm
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=4048
Notes
(1) http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/poets/g_l/levertov/oconnell.htm
(2) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poetics-essay.html?id=237852
(3) http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/poets/g_l/levertov/estess.htmq99q
(4) New York Times story September 15, 1991:
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/15/world/us-army-buried-iraqi-soldiers-alive-i...
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Denise Levertov: six poemsby hemu1en6,346 views
Nice, thanks
All the best
Kean
keanghiero 1 year ago
Another fine selection, and perhaps a good varied introduction to a poet I had hitherto only come across in indexes. Thanks for these.I liked Clouds most and I like her response to the search for satisfying spiritual fulfillment. You make an important contribution to us all with this channel and I, for one, am really grateful.
andrewnorris1 2 years ago
Thanks so much, James! 5* fave, and thanks for acknowledging my interest, as per my comment on your page. I feel a pleasing sense of community here as a result. Much obliged, as ever, for the literary oasis. And how fascinating to read in the information to the right about the constellation of perceptions and experiences that demands the poem. "Everything that Acts is Actual" blows me away. Wonderful!
AllErikaEclectica 2 years ago