Denise Levertov
14 quotes
Biography
"In the dark I rest,unready for the light which dawnsday after day,eager to be shared.Black silk, shelter me.I needmore of the night before I openeyes and heartto illumination. I must stillgrow in the dark like a rootnot ready, not ready at all."
"I long for poems of an inner harmony in utter contrast to the chaos in which they exist. Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock."
"I’ve always hated artificial flowers unless they were just flagrantly and beautifully, sort of brassily, artificial. But the good imitations, the ones that you think are real until you get up to them, and then there’s that awful dead plastic, are really vile. And the reason why I think they’re so vile is because so much of the beauty of a flower is in its very perishableness. One doesn’t want it to last forever, and accumulate dust."
"Acknowledgement, and celebration, of mystery probably constitutes the most consistent theme of my poetry from its very beginnings. Because it is a matter of which I am conscious, it is possible, however imprecisely, to call it an intellectual position; but it is one which emphasizes the incapacity of reason alone (much though I delight in elegant logic) to comprehend experience, and considers Imagination the chief of human faculties. It must therefore be by the exercise of that faculty that one moves toward faith, and possibly by its failure that one rejects it as delusion. Poems present their testimony as circumstantial evidences, not as closing argument. Where Wallace Stevens says, "God and the imagination are one," I would say that the imagination, which synergizes intellect, emotion and instinct, is the perceptive organ through which it is possible, though not inevitable, to experience God."
"I am tired of 'the fine art of unhappiness'."
"Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appearrs, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds — the indivisible shared out in endless abundance."
"Over many years (I am almost 72) so many poets have touched my imagination and opened paths for me—it hardly makes sense to list them. I have always read a great deal of poetry. Some poets—like Robert Lowell, Denise Levertov, Randall Jarrell, Jean Valentine, Audre Lorde, Hayden Carruth, Jane Cooper, June Jordan, Joy Harjo, Clayton Eshelman—have been my friends, we’ve been comrades in exchanging work and encouraging each other"
"But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go."
"Yes, he is here in thisopen field, in sunlight, amongthe few young trees set outto modify the bare facts--he's here, but onlybecause we are here.When we go, he goes with usto be your hands that neverdo violence, your eyesthat wonder, your livesthat daily praise lifeby living it, by laughter.He is never alone here,never cold in the field of graves."
"The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion...elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant."
"Wear scarlet! Tear the green lemonsoff the tree! I don't wantto forget who I am, what has burned in me,and hang limp and clean, an empty dress -"
"I thought I was growing wings—it was a cocoon.I thought, now is the time to stepinto the fire—it was deep water.Eschatology is a word I learnedas a child: the study of Last Things;facing my mirror—no longer young,the news—always of death,the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoringand howling, howling....("Seeing For a Moment")"
"I am, a shadowthat grows longer as the sunmoves, drawn outon a thread of wonder.If I bear burdensthey begin to be rememberedas gifts, goods, a basketof bread that hurtsmy shoulders but closes mein fragrance. I caneat as I go. ("Stepping Westward")"
"The yellow moon dreamilytipping buttons of lightdown among the leaves. Marimba,marimba - from beyond theblack street.Somebody dancing,somebodygetting the helloutta here. Shadows of catsweave round the treetrunks,the exposed knotty roots.("Scenes from the Life of the Peppertrees")"