Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov
Denise Levertovwas a British-born American poet...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 October 1923
prayer writing different
When you're really caught up in writing a poem, it can be a form of prayer. I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer. I feel it in different degrees and not with every poem. But in certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
writing world language
One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.
prayer writing way
In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
writing order stopping
A poet articulating the dreads and horrors of our time is necessary in order to make readers understand what is happening, really understand it, not just know about it but feel it: and should be accompanied by a willingness on the part of those who write it to take additional action towards stopping the great miseries which they record.
prayer writing praying
I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer.
travel islands stories
we are so many and many within themselves travel to far islands but no one asks for their story....
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.
animal track joy
What joy when the insouciant armadillo glances at us and doesn't quicken his trotting across the track into the palm brush. What is this joy? That no animal falters, but knows what it must do?
dream hair splits
And our dreams, with what frivolity we have pared them like toenails, clipped them like ends of split hair.
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.
mother hypocrite men
Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak of our own doubts, while dubiously we mother man in his doubt!
sea shining world
Through the hollow globe, a ring of frayed rusty scrapiron, is it the sea that shines? Is it a road at the world's edge?
money nice wife
Don't eat those nice green dollars your wife gives you for breakfast.
men joy solitude
A blind man. I can stare at him ashamed, shameless. Or does he know it? No, he is in a great solitude. O, strange joy, to gaze my fill at a stranger's face. No, my thirst is greater than before.