Quote

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

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Denise Levertov
Age: 74 †
Born: 1923
Born: October 24
Died: 1997
Died: December 20
Poet
Translator
Writer
Ilford
London
Priscilla D Levertoff
Priscilla Denise Levertoff
Priscilla Denise Levertov
Conditions
Screens
Society
Unknown
Peace
Wars
War
Images
Mind
Casts
Something
Condition
Merely
Interim
Positive
Screen

More quotes by Denise Levertov

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Images split the truth in fractions.
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Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
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Let me walk through the fields of paper touching with my wand dry stems and stunted butterflies.
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I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.
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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.
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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.
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Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak of our own doubts, while dubiously we mother man in his doubt!
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At Delphi I prayed to Apollo that he maintain in me the flame of the poem and I drank of the brackish spring there.
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I'll dig in into my days, having come here to live, not to visit. Grey is the price of neighboring with eagles, of knowing a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen.
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There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am.
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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
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In June the bush we call alder was heavy, listless, its leaves studded with galls, growing wherever we didn't want it.
Denise Levertov
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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
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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?
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But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.
Denise Levertov
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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
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Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.
Denise Levertov
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Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
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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.
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Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
Denise Levertov