October 24, 2011

Denise Levertov*

Denise Levertov (1923 – 1997)

Denise Levertov was born in Ilford, Essex, England, on October 24, 1923. Her father, raised a Hasidic Jew, had converted to Christianity while attending university in Germany. By the time Denise was born he had settled in England and become an Anglican parson. Her mother, who was Welsh, read authors such as Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, and Leo Tolstoy aloud to the family. Denise was educated entirely at home, and claimed to have decided to become a writer at the age of five. When she was twelve, she sent some of her poetry to T. S. Eliot, who responded with two pages of "excellent advice," and encouragement to continue writing. At age seventeen she had her first poem published, in Poetry Quarterly.

During World War II, Levertov became a civilian nurse serving in London throughout the bombings. She wrote her first book, The Double Image, while she was between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one. The book, released in 1946, brought her recognition as one of a group poets dubbed the "New Romantics."

In 1947 Levertov married Mitchell Goodman, an American writer, and a year later they moved to America. They settled in New York City, spending summers in Maine. Their son Nickolai was born in 1949. She became a naturalized U. S. citizen in 1956.

After her move to the U.S., Levertov was introduced to the Transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau, the formal experimentation of Ezra Pound, and, in particular, the work of William Carlos Willams. Through her husband's friendship with poet Robert Creeley, she became associated with the Black Mountain group of poets, particularly Creeley, Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan,, who had formed a short-lived but groundbreaking school in 1933 in North Carolina. Some of her work was published in the 1950s in the Black Mountain Review. Levertov acknowledged these influences, but disclaimed membership in any poetic school. She moved away from the fixed forms of English practice, developing an open, experimental style. With the publication of her first American book, Here and Now (1956), she became an important voice in the American avant-garde. Her poems of the fifties and sixties won her immediate and excited recognition, not just from peers like Creeley and Duncan, but also from the avant garde poets of an earlier generation such as Kenneth Rexroth and William Carlos Williams.

Her next book, With Eyes at the Back of our Heads (1959), established her as one of the great American poets, and her British origins were soon forgotten. She was poetry editor of The Nation magazine in 1961 and from 1963 to 1965. During the 1960's of the Vietnam War, activism and feminism became prominent in her poetry. During this period she produced one of her most memorable works of rage and sadness, The Sorrow Dance (1967), which encompassed her feelings toward the war and the death of her older sister. From 1975 to 1978, she was poetry editor of Mother Jones magazine.

Levertov went on to publish more than twenty volumes of poetry, including Freeing the Dust (1975), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. She was also the author of four books of prose, most recently Tesserae (1995), and translator of three volumes of poetry, among them Jean Joubert's Black Iris (1989). From 1982 to 1993, she taught at Stanford University. She spent the last decade of her life in Seattle, Washington, during which time she published Poems 1968-1972 (1987), Breathing the Water (1987), A Door in the Hive (1989), Evening Train (1992), and The Sands of the Well (1996). In December 1997, Denise Levertov died from complications of lymphoma. She was seventy-four. This Great Unknowing: Last Poems was published by New Directions in 1999.

*Biography from Poets.org

4 comments:

sireneatspoetry said...

Oh! This makes me very happy to see you are getting in to some newer poets. I like this poet.

Thank you for sharing the information and keeping me inspired, as well.

Thank you also for showing me your work. I don't always have the time to give proper response. If there's anything you want from me like feedback, let me know. Other than that, I will simply admire.

I often feel that maybe poetry is dead but if someone like you will go through such great lengths to self study the art, well, it sure as heck isn't dead at all. The academics who claim poetry is dead can therefor shove it. ;)

Much, much admiration, John! Thank you and wishing you all the best.

I hope to at some point begin posting more on my blog as well, publishing, reading others' blogs, etc.

Just thought I'd wave for now and let you know I was here! :] Hi!

Daij said...

I've never heard of her, but I will have to check her out. Thanks for blogging about her.

BerlinerinPoet said...

I wrote a short (and not so good) paper in college about Denise Levertov. It seems sometimes in college you don't really get to explore what you are learning cause you have to quickly ingest and then spit it back out on paper, but it's good to finally get some time to "re-discover" Ms. Levertov. Nice to read her back story too!

niraja said...

i also never read about her ,
but its so nice to know about this lady thanks for writing about her .

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