Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Really
Action
Horror
Stopping
Make
Order
Record
Dread
Time
Part
Necessary
Willingness
Dreads
Take
Poet
Readers
Articulating
Feel
Reader
Happenings
Miseries
Feels
Records
Happening
Horrors
Great
Understand
Misery
Accompanied
Writing
Write
Towards
Additional

More quotes by Denise Levertov

Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am.
Denise Levertov
Image
Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
Denise Levertov
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Beespittle, droppings, hairs of beefur: all become honey. Virulent micro-organisms cannot survive in honey.
Denise Levertov
Image
Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.
Denise Levertov
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I watch the clouds as I see them in pomp advancing, pursuing the fallen sun.
Denise Levertov
Image
And our dreams, with what frivolity we have pared them like toenails, clipped them like ends of split hair.
Denise Levertov
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
Denise Levertov
Image
Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
Denise Levertov
Image
The AvowalAs swimmers dareto lie face to the skyand water bears them,as hawks rest upon airand air sustains themso would I learn to attain freefall, and floatinto Creator Spirit's deep embrace,knowing no effort earnsthat all-surrounding grace.
Denise Levertov
Image
The artist must create himself or be born again.
Denise Levertov
Image
Love is a landscape the long mountains define but don't shut off from the unseeable distance.
Denise Levertov