Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov
Denise Levertovwas a British-born American poet...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 October 1923
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....
block silence police
The vast silence of Buddha overtakes and overrules the oncoming roar of tragic life that fills alleys and avenues; it blocks the way of pedicabs, police, convoys.
heart thinking blue
blue bead on the wick, there's that in me that burns and chills, blackening my heart with its soot, I think sometimes not Apollo heard me but a different god.
wall mountain wavering
Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
loss admitting disaster
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
world ends threat
The threat of world's end is the old threat.
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.