Primal Speech
If there’s an Ur-language still among us,
hiding out like a pygmy pterodactyl
in the woods, sighted at daybreak sometimes,
perched on a telephone wire, or like
prehistoric fish discovered in ocean’s
deepest grottoes, then it’s the exclamation,
universal whatever the sound, the triumphant,
wondering, infant utterance, ‘This! This!’,
showing and proffering the thing, anything,
the affirmation before the naming.
Robert Creely, American poet and close friend of Denise Levertov, has
written: ‘The exceptional grace - a dancer’s I liked to think - of (Denise
Levertov’s) work, the movement so particular to a complex of thought and
feeling accomplished a rare unity. That
unique quality is present in all she does…’ Each time I have felt myself
getting stuck, or more frequently lost in writing this piece on Denise
Levertov, I have returned to spend time with her poetry. There she continues to give me something
fresh, wakes me up to the world a little more. And there too it’s as if, gently
admonishing, she has sent me back into my floating thoughts, back to my blank
screen, and pressed me forward on a track; wondering, enticed. It’s a good creaturely way to move with such
a graceful poet dancer.
Denise Levertov believed that her poetry was ‘testimonies of life
lived.’ She called language ‘her
Jerusalem.’ Her poetry was born out of
her life. In all, she wrote 24 volumes
of poetry, 4 volumes of essays and 8 translations. There is also a substantial body of correspondence and personal
letters, diaries and notebooks. Her writing continued to be throughout her life
piercing with insight, alive to her imagination and attentively wrought. As in her own lived life, her poetry and
poetics evolved. Memories and apprehensions of life, like layers of soil being
built up over time, became mixed with new understanding and insight. In this presentation I shall be looking at
her later poetry for this very reason - in them can still be detected the early strata of her early work.
Denise Levertov was born in England in 1923 and died in America in
1997. Her father, Paul Levertoff, was a
Russian born Jew. He descended from Shneour Zalman, a Russian founding father
of the Habad branch of Hasidism. When Paul converted to Christianity he was
ostracised by his family, and chose to leave Russia after finishing University
to make his own way in the world as a teacher and academic. Denise’s mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones, was
Welsh born. She was orphaned at a young age and brought up by relatives who
were strict Congregationalists. As an adult she travelled and then studied
under Paul Levertoff’s supervision in Constantinople. They married in 1911 and moved to London. There, as Anglican priest, Paul Levertoff
worked in a London Church of England Parish, but he was also the Director of
the East London Centre for Jews and a member of the Hebrew Christian Church.
Later, Levertov described them as ‘exotic birds in the plain English coppice of
Ilford, Essex.’ She called her mother, who was a naturalist and artist, a
‘pointer outer’. Beatrice planted the
seed for Levertov’s own call to ‘pay attention’ to all things, to movements and
changes in the natural world. For Denise, this also translated to attentiveness
to fine tunings within the self. And
it’s a call she extends to us, as reader or listener of her poetry. The final
poem in the last book of her poetry, (Sands of the Well 1996) published
in her lifetime:
Primary Wonder
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
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, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still
hour by hour sustain it.
Although from a very young age Denise Levertov declared herself to be an
agnostic, she nonetheless, celebrated ‘mystery’ and later attributed her keen
sense of ‘wonder’ and ‘marvels’ to her own childhood education in Hasidism.
Dana Greene in her comprehensive biography of Levertov writes: from a young age
we see that Levertov ‘ discovered mystery in the divine sparks of the Hasidism
and in her search for “inscape.”’ But it wasn’t only her Jewish heritage which
had a lifelong influence on her writing about wonder. Greene goes on to say: ‘”
The ‘negative capability” of Keats, the “disinterested intensity” of Rilke, the
“dialogical relationships” of Buber, each brought her closer to its
revelation……(the) search for mystery is everywhere in her poetry, but she
claimed not to have belief. She
considered herself a “syncretist or a dilettante of religions”.’There was a
spirit in Denise Levertov from a very young age which sought expression through
writing poetry, but refused to be contained. Words became Levertov’s primary
and lifelong interest. At the end of her life she lamented that the English working
vocabulary in America was shrinking. She herself wrote her first poem at the
age of 5, dictating it to her older sister Olga. At the age of 11 she sent a
poem to TS Eliot who was then Editor of The Criterion. Though he did not publish the poem, he took
the time to write back to her and advised to keep writing poetry and translate
of other poets. Rilke, was one of a number of poets she translated and went
back to again and again for inspiration throughout her life. Levertov was mainly home schooled by her
mother. Their house was filled with books.
As she grew up increasingly she enjoyed solitary visits to London
galleries and museums; places that become repositories to feed her awakening
imagination. For a time as a young
adult she pursued ballet, but then at 19 became a nurse. However, it was when she left England in
1948, aged 25, having married an American, Mitchell Goodman, that writing
became her primary focus.
The contemporary French phenomenologist, theologian and poet, Jean Louis
Chretien, has written about interplay between the gaze, the speech and the
silence. I have found the idea of this
inter-movement, like a dance, a helpful way of working with Levertov’s poetry.
It’s as if Levertov herself is performing a listening-gaze into silence. This
act is with her whole self, her body, mind and spirit, and the action gives
voice in words born from this. And once uttered, the words themselves seem to
fall back into the unheard. According
to Chretien, listening is prior to speaking, and ‘speaking does not dominate
listening’, thus it provides a common space for community. So this act of
listening-gaze into silence, is relational.
Throughout her life a great deal of Levertov’s poetry celebrates the natural
world. On one level you can read these
poems as a celebration of nature and all its attendant nuances - exteriorily
witnessed and inwardly apprehended. But
when looked closer, what starts happening particularly in her later work, is
even more delicately layered, more exceptionally nuanced. In her search to make
meaning, there is a delicate balance and understanding between the poet as
self-conscious perceiver perceiving, and that which is perceived being both
perceived and also perceiving. The silence that rests in all of this, in the
perceived and the perceiver, and the silence which enables the listening,
precedes all. And this then is all then
further mirrored in the world of the listener or reader - their interplay with
the words, their gaze, their own listening. Last poem, published posthumously
in This Great Unknowing:
Aware
When I opened the door
I found the vine leaves
speaking among themselves in abundant
whispers.
My presence
made them
hush their green breath,
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning up their jackets,
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had ended
just before you arrived.
I
liked
the glimpse I had, though,
of their obscure
gestures. I liked the sound
of such private voices. Next time
I’ll move like cautious sunlight, open
the door by fractions, eavesdrop
peacefully.
For Chretien, silence, the unknown, is the ground of speech. And the first
dimension of this silence is listening. ‘I opened the door / I found the
vineleaves / speaking among themselves in abundant / whispers.’ Secondly, there is silence as response. Chretien says: ‘here the
suspension of speech is still itself speech, an eloquent silence, a place of
encounter and mutual presence.’ ‘My presence made them / hush their green
breath.’ What do the plants do? They ‘button up their jackets, act as if they
were leaving anyway’. Mutual encounter
and response in silence. And thirdly,
according to Chretien, speech as excess.
Excess means ‘a surplus of content that defies our attempt at grasping
it through our understanding.’ Speech becomes religious. It encounters the
Divine. It becomes the Incarnate Word which redeems human silence and helps us
listen for a Eucharistic excess in the cosmic silence. It leaves its traces in the ordinary, traces
many of us have lost sight of, but still remain for those who are willing to
‘relearn the world.’ Here, for the poet: ‘Next time / I’ll move like cautious
sunlight, open / the door by fractions, eavesdrop / peacefully.’ What is the
poet wanting to hear? What does she think she will overhear in her
eavesdropping? Is it such ‘excess’? We
are left wondering too, what is it that we hear and do not hear in the world
around us? This is a poem about the
privileged articulated view of a listening-gaze into nature: ‘I liked the
glimpse I had’, ‘I liked the sound’.
And the poem itself becomes the explanation for its title, Aware.
To be aware in the world is to be attuned to this interplay of gaze, silence
and word. Attuned, and listening deeply.
From their outset in New York, Denise Levertov and Mitch Goodman moved in
cultured circles - bohemian, literary, academic and activist. A year after their marriage their only
child, Nikolai, was born. Over the next 15 years Levertov formed close ties
with older poets in particular William Carlos Williams and H.D., and also The
Black Mountain Poets, those of her own generation, Robert Creely and Robert
Duncan. In 1955 she became an American citizen. But these were also very
difficult years. There were marital and
financial problems, frustrations with her own irrepressible passions. She felt
trapped and was not only concerned about the health of her parents and sister,
but also experienced difficulties with her son. Mitch suffered depression and
setbacks with his own writing. They moved around and lived in Mexico for a
period. Nonetheless by the end of 1955 Levertov had really begun to make
inroads into the American poetry scene.
Very quickly, and uniquely for a woman at this time, she was
establishing a name for herself. And a decade later she had 5 more published
books of poetry and was now benefitting from public readings, fellowships and
teaching positions.
For her 31st birthday Mitch gave
Denise a two volume set of Buber’s Tales of Hasidism. In it they were
delighted to read about her ancestor, Shneour Zalman. The work itself resonated
with her mystic heritage. Buber’s writing was influential in other ways. From
early on Levertov apprehended in life a ‘double image’ : joy and wonder, fear
and promise. Buber helped further her imagination understand the self’s
engagement with the interior terrain and exterior world. Also, the self’s
connection with another self, with God, with the Other. Later, Thomas Didymus, or doubting Thomas,
became one New Testament figure which helped in terms of exploring her own
awakening Christian faith alongside doubt.
She was discovering a place where faith and doubt could co-exist in art,
as in the self.
Central to the work of Chretien is the notion that the relationship between
God, human and the world, is a calling forth, and a need for response. For Chretien, silence ‘opens us, wounds us
spiritually and bodily, and summons us.’
During the 1960s and 1970s Levertov became actively involved in working
for values of human justice; with protest groups she struggled for peace and
care of the earth. She worked tirelessly, with Mitch, on anti-Vietnam War
campaigns, and they were leading speakers for nuclear disarmanent groups and
the environmental movement. She was
arrested several times. Her poetry during this period reflects her social and
political activism. Such public activism was not new to her. As a child her
family had sheltered refugees. With her parents Levertov had publicly
demonstrated against fascism. She had
wanted to join the British communist party but was too young, resigning herself
instead to simply selling The Daily Worker.
But Levertov’s social activist spirit in the late 1960s and 1970s began to
burn her out: ‘There is a cataract filming over / my inner eyes’ she writes in
her poem Advent 1966. She felt as if a ‘monstrous insect / has entered
my head.’ She had to Relearn the
Alphabet. She recognised that her
poetic space, writing and teaching, had to be her primary journey, not social
activism. She also recognised that for her poetry was a craft and had a
prophetic dimension, but it was not therapy or confessional. Amusingly in 1978
she said: ‘A poem is not vomit!...It is something very different from bodily
purge.’ Poetry was organic, coming out of lived experience, which carefully
uses shape and form, line break, rhythm, punctuation, indentation to articulate
this intense experience like melody to the reader. The poet has an inner voice
which seeks to articulate something pre-verbally intuited. This something is deeply personal which
seeks to meet the personal in another.
It is born ‘in the presence of a god.’
Levertov understood herself as ‘by nature, heritage and as an artist,
forever a stranger and pilgrim.’ She understood herself as an ‘air plant,’
rootless, wandering, whilst remaining true to that instinct within herself to
press on. In some ways she could never let anything go. She explored memories, kept a dream diary,
reflected on her friendships. Accumulating
knowledge, experience and understanding she would then seek to distil this into
language. But by the mid-1970s her
engagements with Anti-Vietnam War efforts had ceased with the end of the War,
she finally broke off her marriage to Mitchell Goodman, and disconnected
herself from Robert Duncan.
During the years 1979-1982, Levertov wrote the long poem entitled: A
Mass for the Day of St Thomas Didymus. The process of writing this poem she
described as a conversion process. As
with other poems written during this
period, including El Salvador: Requiem and Celebration, such poems
became vehicles through which she was able to wrestle with spiritual and
theological issues. She now talked
about poems which ‘enfaith’, in other words help birth faith in God. But conversion to Catholicism came slowly
for her. Later she also attributed her conversion to the figures of Dorothy
Day, Thomas Merton and Oscar Romero. And before deciding on Catholicism she
visited many churches, Anglican, Presbyterian, Catholic in Boston and London.
The poem The Servant-Girl at Emmaus (A Painting by Velazquez) is
based on a 17th painting, 'The
Kitchen Maid' or 'La Mulata' in Spanish, by Velazquez in 17th century. A mulata is a woman of mixed race. The word itself actually comes from the Spanish, la mula, which
means ‘mule.’ Levertov would have been aware, there are two versions of this
painting. One on display in Dublin, the
one which Levertov had seen on a visit, and one in Chicago. In a 1933 cleaning of the Dublin painting, a
depiction of the supper with Jesus at Emmaus was revealed. So before we even read this poem it’s of
note that the painting itself is contextualised within two ideas of great
interest to Levertov - the double: one painting has the Emmaus scene, the other
doesn’t, and; the uncovering of the hidden, the not-seen becoming revealed.
The Servant-Girl at
Emmaus (A Painting by Velazquez)
She listens, listens,
holding
her breath. Surely that voice
is his - the one
who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
as no one had ever looked?
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?
her breath. Surely that voice
is his - the one
who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
as no one had ever looked?
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?
Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he’d laid on the dying and made them well?
Surely that face-?
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he’d laid on the dying and made them well?
Surely that face-?
The man they’d crucified for
sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumoured now some women had seen this morning, alive?
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumoured now some women had seen this morning, alive?
Those who brought this
stranger home to their table
don’t recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching the winejug she’s to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,
don’t recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching the winejug she’s to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,
swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.
the light around him
and is sure.
The poem itself refers to the story in Luke after the death of Jesus when
Cleopas and another unnamed person are pondering recent events as they walk
along the road of Emmaus. They meet Jesus who helps them understand the
revelation of scripture more deeply, but they do not recognise him. They invite
this stranger home for dinner and it is only at the end of this meal when he
departs that they recognise him as Jesus.
Levertov’s poem, like Velazquez’ painting, draws on two main themes in
the Gospel story: the recognition of Jesus, and Jesus’ affirmation and
inclusivity of the outsider. The scene painted by Velazquez is of a mulata
slave whose body position is turned away from Jesus as she makes bread in an adjacent
room. But her head is slightly turned
towards him; she is overhearing his conversation, listening to ‘that voice’. Is
this the man who had looked at the mixed raced servant, ‘once, across the
crowd, / as no one had ever looked’? Chretien says that listening is a ‘truly
palpitating activity, it can happen only with this heart that beats, this air
breathed in and breathed out, this patient activity of the entire body. It is with all one’s body that one listens…The
always unfinished truth of listening is a heartfelt truth.’ In order to truly
identify Jesus, the servant girl has to hear the silence within herself to then
verify the voice of someone who once ‘looked at her across the crowd’, who had
‘seen’ her. This is a seeing that is both interior as well as exterior. It’s
happening within Jesus, and within the servant-girl. It’s the very memory of the sound of Jesus’ voice that
recognises and affirms her. She remembers his past recognition of her own
selfhood being shown to be worthy. In both instances he doesn’t even need to
say her name and he doesn't even need to speak with words to her. But she holds
back her breath, can’t let go of it until she is sure that it is him. She is in
a gap space between heartbeats. Like Doubting Thomas she needs more evidence.
And it is only she alone who can take that final bodily action to turn around
and see. To answer this call, she must
risk all.
She swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure
That Jesus has already recognised the mulata and his hosts, from the very
start, is assumed by the poet. Here again we have listening-gaze: a perceiver
perceiving, and the perceived - Jesus -is also perceiver. Jesus is recognised in the poem as the
recogniser of all; though he sits with those who are still blind to the truth
of his identity. His table is a
Eucharistic gathering. The whole poem, like the painting, is centralised and
sacramentalised in him. And, in both
poem and painting, the Eucharist is at its centre, yet placed off-centre stage.
This is a Jesus who seems to be in the background, but actually is drawing
everyone, including the reader or viewer, to Him, and to God. Both poem and painting are titled The
Servant Girl, but everything is actually directed toward Jesus. He invites
inclusion and identity for everyone, including the servant girl at a much
greater feast, the Eucharist. At the
end of the poem, though she is still doubly excluded from society - by her
class, and her race - through the risen Christ she is given recognition,
affirmation and belonging in the kingdom of God.
Levertov wrote this poem in 1987. She herself is that servant girl at
Emmaus. Her past and present are depicted there. She described herself as a ‘mongrel’. Before she could dare to swing round, look at the Christ squarely,
she had to find the courage to ‘risk all’.
She was becoming much more attuned to this newly transformed, yet ever
ancient, inner voice she had always heard and trusted, but never quite in this
way before. Though she had always known that the visible and the invisible, and
the audible and inaudible are not rigidly separated, she was coming to
understand the nature of excess that is poured out from the silence. However, right up until her death in 1997
Levertov remained adamant in the distinction that she was a poet who was a
mystic, not a mystic who was a poet. As Dana Green puts it, for her: ‘Mystic
and artist were singular ways of being and distinctive vocations.’ But the distinction was becoming very
blurred.
Levertov’s concern for social justice issues remained strong
throughout her life. Invited to give a
Pentecost sermon on Peace at the Cathedral Church of St Paul in Boston in 1988
she said: ‘If we neglect our inner lives, we destroy the sources of fruitful
outer action. But if we do not act, our inner lives become mere monuments to
egotism.’ In the 1980s she not only
recognised poetry as her primary means for expressing social concerns but it is
that space whereby the attunement of one’s whole self enables one to became
more alive than ever. And as a pilgrim, she felt ever called to pressing out
past the boundaries of self and journeying onwards into the unknown.
In 1982 Levertov took up a teaching position at Stanford University, which
became the Institution she ultimately sold all her correspondence and journals
to and which house them still today. Although finally settling in Seattle, she
continued to write poetry, read widely, ask questions, give talks, teach, and
reflect on the craft of poetry in her journals, letters and books. In doing this
she was also able to cover her own costs and look after the financial needs of
her adult son, Nikolai, who at 33 was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Right up
to her death in 1997, she was awarded honours and prizes. In these last 15
years of her life she became engaged with works such as The Cloud of
Unknowing, and wrestled with the ideas of people such as Benedicta Ward,
Anthony Bloom, Basil Pennington. Murray Bodo, the Franciscan father, became a
spiritual mentor who advised and helped her in particular with her challenges
with Nikolai. She worked with the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of
Loyola with Lee Dapfer as her director. For ‘temperamental’ and
‘ideological’ reasons, she chose not to have a spiritual director, but Julian
of Norwich became a nominal one.
Impatient and irritable, by her own admission, Levertov had alienated many
people in her life. However, as Dana Green comments: ‘The late 1980s were for
Levertov a time of making peace and reconciling. Through imagination she restored a relationship with persons in
the past and forged a link between her vocation as poet and Christian. The
result was greater personal tranquillity and a desire to ‘clear the decks’ and
risk a new beginning.’ As her own self
was being transformed during the last 15 years of her life, immeasurable
reconciliations began to place - with Mitch, with the memories of Robert Duncan
and her family, with Adrienne Rich, and increasingly with Nikolai.
Visitation. Overflow.
1
The slender evidence……
The you must take
my word for it.
my word for it.
The intake of a word.
Its taste, cloud in the mouth.
Its taste, cloud in the mouth.
The presence, invisible,
impalpable, air to
outstretched arms,
impalpable, air to
outstretched arms,
but voiced, tracked easily
in room’s geography,
among the maps, the gazing-window,
door, fire, all in place, internal
space immutable.
in room’s geography,
among the maps, the gazing-window,
door, fire, all in place, internal
space immutable.
The slenderness
of evidence, narrow backed
tapir undulating
away on
rainforest paths,
each tapir bearing
a human soul.
of evidence, narrow backed
tapir undulating
away on
rainforest paths,
each tapir bearing
a human soul.
2
Amazon basin,
filling, overflowing
spirits in every
plant, in bark, in every
animal, in
juice of bark. Words taken
filling, overflowing
spirits in every
plant, in bark, in every
animal, in
juice of bark. Words taken
by lips, tongue, teeth,
throat,
down into body’s
caverns, to enter
blood, bone, breath, as here:
down into body’s
caverns, to enter
blood, bone, breath, as here:
as here the presence
next to that window, appearance
next to that window, appearance
known not to sight,
to touch,
but to hearing, yes, and yet
appearing, apprehended
to touch,
but to hearing, yes, and yet
appearing, apprehended
in form, in color, by
some sense unnamed,
some sense unnamed,
3
moving slenderly
doorwards, assured, re-
assuring, leaving
doorwards, assured, re-
assuring, leaving
a trace, of certainty,
promise
broader than slender
tapir’s disappearing
sturdy back, the
you can only
take my
word for it, a life,
a phase,
beyond the
known geography, beyond familiar
broader than slender
tapir’s disappearing
sturdy back, the
you can only
take my
word for it, a life,
a phase,
beyond the
known geography, beyond familiar
inward, outward,
outward, inward. A
outward, inward. A
‘time and place’ (other
terms
unavailing)
of learning, of casting
off of dross, as when
hunters steam off fur, skin,
feathers in cauldrons, leaving
the flesh to share
with all, the humble
feast, slender
unavailing)
of learning, of casting
off of dross, as when
hunters steam off fur, skin,
feathers in cauldrons, leaving
the flesh to share
with all, the humble
feast, slender
evidence, take it
or leave it, I give you
my word.
or leave it, I give you
my word.
Visitation. Overflow. was published
posthumously, in the volume: This Great Unknowing. There are different ways to move with this
poem. Words here are ingested, ‘taste, cloud in the mouth’. They are a visceral
experience, but also ‘tracked easily / in a room’s geography’. They are heard
and apprehended ‘by some sense unnamed.’ Words travel to become, ‘flesh to
share with all’. This ‘humble / feast’
is a Eucharistic image. And it’s a
feast centered on and flowing from the word / Word. The overflow that is born
in the silence of the body helps us listen for Eucharistic excess born in the
cosmic silence.
It’s as if, by implication of the two full stops after each word, Visitation.
Overflow. that the poem has two titles.
They are two distinct happenings. By this, is Levertov trying to
articulate something witnessed as being given and received from a place of
unknowing that then is able to pour itself out? Or, does the gift itself
continue to be given, feasted on, an overflowing? Here the Visitation and the overflow are one in the present
moment, and go on endlessly in the poetic craft and the act of creation itself.
When Christians hear the word
‘Visitation’, they think of Mary, who after being visited at the Annunciation
by the Angel Gabriel and pregnant with Jesus, went to see her pregnant cousin,
Elizabeth. Through the recognition of
the Christ Child by John, Elizabeth's unborn son, they are both filled with Divine Grace. In this poem the
Incarnate Word is enfleshed within the self and it gives birth to poetic utterance. Its journey is like that of a ‘narrow backed / tapir undulating /
away on / rainbow paths, each tapir bearing / a human soul.’ When I looked up ‘tapir’ I found that this
animal is known as a peaceful wanderer, an endangered species, a shy
hermit, a gentle, custodian of the
forest, an animal that travels well-worn trails from dense undergrowth, a
negotiator of forest paths. It’s journey in this poem is likened to ‘as when’ :
hunters steam off fur, skin,
feathers in cauldrons, leaving
the flesh to share
with all, the humble
feast, slender
hunters steam off fur, skin,
feathers in cauldrons, leaving
the flesh to share
with all, the humble
feast, slender
evidence, take it
or leave it. I give you
or leave it. I give you
my word.
The inner tapir is a creaturely spirit that walks through dense forest
trails of self to find language, to then share with others.
This is a poem as much about the birth of poetry as the birth of faith
itself, within the body. The experience of this birth can only be known via
taking the journey itself. The process
can only be attested to with ‘slender evidence’ but is backed by the poet’s
word. The Visitation is the bearing
witness to this enfleshed word; the recognition that this process is dipped in
the Divine. The Overflow is its
consequent abundant and continuing lifegivingness.
In the last 10 years of her life Levertov had entered a place of much
largesse of heart and word. The double image increasingly needed to break
open. It is still there - Sojourns
in a Parallel World, Writer and Reader. But it seeks break out into a ‘great choir’ or harmonies that
combine to ‘make / waves and ripples of music’s ocean’. Levertov continued to
struggle with many theological ideas: free will and a suffering world being
primary preoccupations. She wrestled as
well with the Catholic Church and its teachings, particularly birth control and
abortion. But it was also a period
where fiercely radical re-facing and re-visioning of her own life took place.
As she asked hard intellectual and spiritual questions, she began to find answers
in her own poetic space. It was a time
whereby many threads of her life integrated and a new wholeness of self
emerged. Her striving to love God became a slow recognition that in reality she
was actually being offered God’s immense love for her.
Bibliography:
Collected Poems of Denise
Levertov, Introduction by Eaven Boland, A New Directions Book, 2013
Denise Levertov: A Poet’s
Life, by Dana Greene, University of Illinois Press, 2012
Forrest Clingerman, Book
Profile JCRT 6.1 December 2004: Hand to Hand: Listening to the Work
of Art by Jean-Louis Chretien, Translated by Stephen E Lewis Fordham
University Press, 2003, & The Ark of Speech by Jean-Louis Chretien,
Translated by Andrew Brown. Routledge 2004
PDF : www.jcrt.org>archives>clingerman
PDF : www.jcrt.org>archives>clingerman
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