Denise Levertov Quotes & Sayings

Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August ... — Denise Levertov

I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer. — Denise Levertov

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. — Denise Levertov

The artist must create himself or be born again. — Denise Levertov

You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night. — Denise Levertov

Do you mistake me?
I am speaking of living,
of moving from one moment into
the next, and into the
one after, breathing
death in the spring air ... — Denise Levertov

The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion ... elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant. — Denise Levertov

There's in my mind a ...
turbulent moon-ridden girl
or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags, feathers
and torn taffeta,
who knows strange songs
but she is not kind. — Denise Levertov

We are so many
and many within themselves
travel to far islands but no one
asks for their story ... — Denise Levertov

Each part
of speech a spark
awaiting redemption, each
a virtue, a power
in abeyance ... — Denise Levertov

Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak
of our own doubts, while dubiously
we mother man in his doubt! — Denise Levertov

Marvelous Truth, confront us at every turn, in every guise. — Denise Levertov

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. — Denise Levertov

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") — Denise Levertov

There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am ... — Denise Levertov

The world is not with us enough. — Denise Levertov

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. — Denise Levertov

But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go. — Denise Levertov

We have the words in our pockets,
obscure directions. The old ones
have taken away the light of their presence ... — Denise Levertov

Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering. — Denise Levertov

I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct. — Denise Levertov

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. — Denise Levertov

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. — Denise Levertov

I learn to affirm
Truth's light at strange turns of the mind's road,
wrong turns that lead
over the border into wonder ... — Denise Levertov

If woman is inconstant, good, I am faithful to ebb and flow, I fall in season and now is a time of ripening. — Denise Levertov

Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.
("A Tree Telling of Orpheus") — Denise Levertov

The last cobwebs
of fog in the
black firtrees are flakes
of white ash in the world's hearth. — Denise Levertov

Trying to remember old dreams. A voice. Who came in.
And meanwhile the rain, all day, all evening,
quiet steady sound. Before it grew too dark
watched the blue iris leaning under the rain,
the flame of the poppies guttered and went out.
A voice. Almost recalled. There have been times
the gods entered. Entered a room, a cave?
A long enclosure where I was, the fourth wall of it
too distant or too dark to see. The birds are silent,
no moths at the lit windows. Only a swaying rosebush
pierces the table's reflection, raindrops gazing from it.
There have been hands laid on my shoulders.
What has been said to me,
how has my life replied?
The rain, the rain ... — Denise Levertov

And our dreams,
with what frivolity we have pared them
like toenails, clipped them like ends of
split hair. — Denise Levertov

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. — Denise Levertov

I believe every space and comma is a living part of the poem and has its function, just as every muscle and pore of the body has its function. And the way the lines are broken is a functioning part essential to the life of the poem. — Denise Levertov

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. — Denise Levertov

Slowly the pale
dew-beads of light
lapped up from flowers
can thicken,
darken to gold:
honey of the human. — Denise Levertov

Let the space under the first storey be dark, let the water
lap the stone posts, and vivid green slime glimmer
upon them; let a boat be kept there. — Denise Levertov

Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney's shadow. — Denise Levertov

Very few people really see things unless they've had someone in early life who made them look at things. And name them too. But the looking is primary, the focus. — Denise Levertov

But we have only begun to love the earth. We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life. How could we tire of hope?-so much is in bud. — Denise Levertov

There comes a time when only anger is love. — Denise Levertov

Looking, Walking, Being, I look and look. Looking's a way of being: one becomes, sometimes, a pair of eyes walking. Walking wherever looking takes one. The eyes dig and burrow into the world. They touch, fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor. World and the past of it, not only visible present, solid and shadow that looks at one looking. And language? Rhythms of echo and interruption? That's a way of breathing. breathing to sustain looking, walking and looking, through the world, in it. — Denise Levertov

So absolute, it is
no other than
happiness itself, a breathing
too quiet to hear. — Denise Levertov

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. — Denise Levertov

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? — Denise Levertov

My pleasure
was in the strength of my back,
in my noble shoulders, the cool
smooth flesh cylinders of my arms. — Denise Levertov

I am, a shadow
that grows longer as the sun
moves, drawn out
on a thread of wonder.
If I bear burdens
they begin to be remembered
as gifts, goods, a basket
of bread that hurts
my shoulders but closes me
in fragrance. I can
eat as I go.
("Stepping Westward") — Denise Levertov

Grey is the price
of neighboring with eagles, of knowing
a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen. — Denise Levertov

Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it. — Denise Levertov

The AvowalAs swimmers dareto lie face to the skyand water bears them,as hawks rest upon airand air sustains them;so would I learn to attain freefall, and floatinto Creator Spirit's deep embrace,knowing no effort earnsthat all-surrounding grace. — Denise Levertov

When he opens his eyes he gives to what he gazes at the recognition no look ever before granted it. It becomes a word. — Denise Levertov

Peace as a positive condition of society, not merely as an interim between wars, is something so unknown that it casts no images on the mind's screen. — Denise Levertov

We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too. — Denise Levertov

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. — Denise Levertov

The threat
of world's end is the old threat. — Denise Levertov

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. — Denise Levertov

Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the invisible shared out in endless abundance. — Denise Levertov

Some people, no matter what you give them, still want the moon.
The bread, the salt, white meat and dark meat, still hungry.
The marriage bed and the cradle, still empty arms.
You give them land, their own earth under their feet, still they take to the roads.
And water: dig them the deepest, still it's not deep enough to drink the moon from. — Denise Levertov

Turn from that road's beguiling ease; return
to your hunger's turret. Enter, climb the stair
chill with disuse, where the croaking toad of time
regards from shimmering eyes your slow ascent
and the drip, drip, of darkness glimmers on the stone
to show you how your longing waits alone.
What alchemy shines from under that shut door,
spinning out gold from the hollow of the heart?
("The Sea's Wash In The Hollow Of The Heart") — Denise Levertov

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? — Denise Levertov

Nd as you read
the sea is turning its dark pages,
turning
its dark pages. — Denise Levertov

Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock. — Denise Levertov

We must breathe time as fishes breathe water. — Denise Levertov

Let me walk through the fields of paper touching with my wand dry stems and stunted butterflies ... — Denise Levertov

Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it. — Denise Levertov

Wear scarlet! Tear the green lemons
off the tree! I don't want
to forget who I am, what has burned in me,
and hang limp and clean, an empty dress - — Denise Levertov

Your secret was not the craftsman's delight in process,
which doesn't distinguish work from pleasure
your way was not to exalt nor avoid
the Adamic legacy, you simply made it irrelevant:
everything faded, thinned to nothing, beside
the light which bathed and warmed, the Presence
your being had opened to. Where it shone,
there life was, and abundantly; it touched
your dullest task, and the task was easy. — Denise Levertov

In certain ways writing is a form of prayer. — Denise Levertov

Yes, he is here in this
open field, in sunlight, among
the few young trees set out
to modify the bare facts
he's here, but only
because we are here.
When we go, he goes with us
to be your hands that never
do violence, your eyes
that wonder, your lives
that daily praise life
by living it, by laughter.
He is never alone here,
never cold in the field of graves. — Denise Levertov

Love is a landscape the long mountains
define but don't
shut off from the
unseeable distance. — Denise Levertov

The world is not with us enough. O taste and see. — Denise Levertov

You have come to the shore. There are no instructions. — Denise Levertov

Both art and faith are dependent on imagination; both are ventures into the unknown. — Denise Levertov

An awe so quiet I don't know when it began.
A gratitude had begun to sing in me.
Was there some moment dividing song from no song?
When does dewfall begin?
When does night fold its arms over our hearts to cherish them?
When is daybreak? — Denise Levertov

In June the bush we call
alder was heavy, listless,
its leaves studded with galls,
growing wherever we didn't
want it. — Denise Levertov

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. — Denise Levertov

It is fatal to one's artistic life to talk about something this is in process. — Denise Levertov

It's when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart. — Denise Levertov

The stairway is not
a thing of gleaming strands
a radiant evanescence
for angels' feet that only glance in their tread, and need not
touch the stone. — Denise Levertov

Images
split the truth
in fractions. — Denise Levertov

In city, in suburb, in forest, no way to stretch out the arms - so if you would grow, go straight up or deep down. — Denise Levertov

I watch the clouds as I see them
in pomp advancing, pursuing
the fallen sun. — Denise Levertov

Two girls discover the secret of life
in a sudden line of poetry. — Denise Levertov

At Delphi I prayed
to Apollo
that he maintain in me
the flame of the poem
and I drank of the brackish
spring there ... — Denise Levertov

Nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have. — Denise Levertov

Don't eat
those nice green dollars your wife
gives you for breakfast. — Denise Levertov

Prophetic utterance, like poetic utterance, transforms experience and moves the receiver to new attitudes. The kinds of experience
the recognitions or revelations
out of which both prophecy and poetry emerge, are such as to stir the prophet or poet to speech that may exceed their own known capacities; they are "inspired," they breathe in revelation and breathe out new words; and by so doing they transfer over to the listener or reader a parallel experience, a parallel intensity, which impels that person into new attitudes and new actions. — Denise Levertov

Just when you seem to yourself nothing but a flimsy web of questions, you are given the questions of others to hold in the emptiness of your hands, songbird eggs that can still hatch if you keep them warm, butterflies opening and closing themselves in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure their scintillant fur, their dust. You are given the questions of others as if they were answers to all you ask. Yes, perhaps this gift is your answer. — Denise Levertov

The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer. — Denise Levertov

The yellow moon dreamily
tipping buttons of light
down among the leaves. Marimba,
marimba - from beyond the
black street.
Somebody dancing,
somebody
getting the hell
outta here. Shadows of cats
weave round the treetrunks,
the exposed knotty roots.
("Scenes from the Life of the Peppertrees") — Denise Levertov

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. — Denise Levertov

What I heard was my whole self saying and singing what it knew: I can. — Denise Levertov

Beespittle, droppings, hairs
of beefur: all become honey.
Virulent micro-organisms cannot
survive in honey. — Denise Levertov