In a Dark Time … The Eye Begins to See

Paul Lacey, editor of Denise Levertov Selected Poems suggests that Levertov’s poetry can be divided into three phases, the first phase being “the period when she was praised by the greatest number of critics for her ’sacramental’ and celebratory vision, and when she is most obviously influenced by Williams and learning American speech.” Most of [...]

According to Paul Lacey the second section of Denise Levertov Selected Poems is the section when “she is most overtly, but never exclusively, political in her writing, most torn by doubts about her poetic vision, given over to grief at loss of her sister and her mother and when her marriage ends.” Little wonder, then, [...]

Though I don’t like Levertov’s later poems as much as her earlier ones, there are still some I’m quite enthralled with. Perhaps only someone from the Pacific Northwest would choose the poems I’ve chosen here from Denise Levertov’s final poems, but luckily this is my blog not a formal review and I only have to [...]

I almost finished reading Denise Levertov’s Breathing the Water while waiting at the airport and while staying overnight in the motel, but it took me another three days here at Tyson and Jen’s house to finally finish the last section. I had a hard time picking a representative poem, having marked twelve as possible [...]