#levertov

[existential-celestial]

Denise Levertov, from “A Blessing (For Joanna Macy),” in Breathing the Water

[heteroglossia]

"I believe our survival demands revolution, both cultural and political. If we are to survive the disasters that threaten, and survive our own struggle to make it new--a struggle I believe we have no choice but to commit ourselves to--we need tremendous transfusions of imaginative energy. If it is indeed revolution we are moving toward, we need life, and abundantly--we need poems of the spirit, to inform us of the essential, to help us live the revolution. And if instead it be the Last Days--then we need to taste the dearest, freshest drops before we die--why bother with anything less than that, the essential?"

Denise Levertov, The Poet in the World

[misereremepeccatorem]

Levertov Week: Annuals

Annuals

All I planted came up, balsam and nasturtium and cosmos and the Marvel of Peru

first the cotyledon then thickly the differentiated true leaves of the seedlings,

and I transplanted them, carefully shaking out each one’s hairfine rootlets from the earth,

and they have thriven, well-watered in the new-turned earth; and grow apace now –

but not one shows signs of a flower, not one.            …

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[philipchircop]

CONSENT

Here’s a poem I sat with yesterday. I snuggled in Denise Levertov’s verses and rested therein. 

This was the minute no one speaks of, when she could still refuse. A breath unbreathed, Spirit, suspended, waiting. She did not cry, “I cannot, I am not worthy,” nor, “I have not the strength.” She did not submit with gritted teeth, raging, coerced. Bravest of all humans, consent illumined her. The room filled with its light, the lily glowed in it, and the iridescent wings. Consent, courage unparalleled, opened her utterly.

Source: excerpted from “Annunication” by Denise Levertov, in “A Door in the Hive” (New Directions, 1989) page 88

[borderlinenuminous-blog]

somehow!) he could avoid the streets,

“Uncertain Oneiromancy,” D. Levertov

[theshatterednotes]

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, “At David’s Grave“, Poems 1968 – 1972

[anatellerwrites-blog]

Myths of Reality, after “Pleasures” by Denise Levertov

I like to find the truths that may not be true at first glance, the falseness of candor, the eversion of earth: to turn the sphere inside out and discover the mantle exterior.

The hollow needles wrapped in armored skin: the fangs of the python welling with lemon tinged venom that I milk from its throat, bright and warm in its glass, toxicity suspending allure.   Or the cold beat of the penguin’s wing, down fluffed by antarctic air, the wind that flows beneath the unfurled feathers of creatures of land air and sea.   I like to watch their dance in the sky, their beaks a bright streak of tangerine in the clouds, their heads a shadow before fading into golden gradient.   I like to see the blood trickle through the man o’ war’s veins wine red, stark against transparent violet jelly as its tendrils sneak a current through the surface of gray blue waves.

-Ana Teller, March 2017

[wordsmusicandstories]

Ripubblicazione su Masticadores Italia

Ringrazio Simon James Terzo per aver riproposto questo mio post 🙏💙🙏 Luisa Zambrotta – The secret / Il segreto di Denise Levertov