Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov
Denise Levertovwas a British-born American poet...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 October 1923
imagination mediocrity capacity
Mediocrity is perhaps due not so much to lack of imagination as to lack of faith in the imagination, lack of the capacity for this abandon.
war night saying-nothing
our nerve filaments twitch with its presence day and night, nothing we say has not the husky phlegm of it in the saying, nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have.
taken light poetry
We have the words in our pockets, obscure directions. The old ones have taken away the light of their presence....
white fog black
The last cobwebs of fog in the black firtrees are flakes of white ash in the world's hearth.
world taste enough
The world is not with us enough. O taste and see.
june growing want
In June the bush we call alder was heavy, listless, its leaves studded with galls, growing wherever we didn't want it.
art artist born
The artist must create himself or be born again.
cities growth arms
In city, in suburb, in forest, no way to stretch out the arms - so if you would grow, go straight up or deep down.
lying found repose
I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.
artistic-life artistic process
It is fatal to one's artistic life to talk about something this is in process.
heart eye dark
In the dark I rest, unready for the light which dawns day after day, eager to be shared. Black silk, shelter me. I need more of the night before I open eyes and heart to illumination. I must still grow in the dark like a root not ready, not ready at all.
memories offering clothes
Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing their colored clothes; caps and bells. And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng's clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, 0 Lord, Creator, Hallowed one, You still, hour by hour sustain it.
women fall ebb-and-flow
If woman is inconstant, good, I am faithful to ebb and flow, I fall in season and now is a time of ripening.
love distance long
Love is a landscape the long mountains define but don't shut off from the unseeable distance.