Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov
Denise Levertovwas a British-born American poet...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 October 1923
night years numbers
Among a hundred windows shining dully in the vast side of greater-than-palace number such-and-such one burns these several years, each night as if the room within were aflame.
night years wonder
Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
girl two secret
Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
dog children sleep
I thought I was growing wings— it was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step into the fire— it was deep water. Eschatology is a word I learned as a child: the study of Last Things; facing my mirror—no longer young, the news—always of death, the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoring and howling, howling.... ("Seeing For a Moment")
teacher jobs teaching
Teachers at all levels encourage the idea that you have to talk about things in order to understand them, because they wouldn't have jobs, otherwise. But it's phony, you know.
encouragement imagination affliction
Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it.
there-comes-a-time
There comes a time when only anger is love.
book thinking effectiveness
I don't think one can accurately measure the historical effectiveness of a poem; but one does know, of course, that books influence individuals; and individuals, although they are part of large economic and social processes, influence history. Every mass is after all made up of millions of individuals.
pain white knowing
Death and pain dominate this world, for though many are cured, they leave still weak, still tremulous, still knowing mortality has whispered to them; have seen in the folding of white bedspreads according to rule the starched pleats of a shroud.
prayer spring flames
At Delphi I prayed to Apollo that he maintain in me the flame of the poem and I drank of the brackish spring there....
flower light gold
slowly the pale dew-beads of light lapped up from flowers can thicken, darken to gold: honey of the human.
happiness breathing quiet
So absolute, it is no other than happiness itself, a breathing too quiet to hear.
white fog black
The last cobwebs of fog in the black firtrees are flakes of white ash in the world's hearth.
art artist born
The artist must create himself or be born again.