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Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
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
Awaken
Shock
Function
Poetry
Means
Social
Mean
Sleepers
Insofar
More quotes by Denise Levertov
Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
Denise Levertov
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
At Delphi I prayed to Apollo that he maintain in me the flame of the poem and I drank of the brackish spring there.
Denise Levertov
And our dreams, with what frivolity we have pared them like toenails, clipped them like ends of split hair.
Denise Levertov
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
Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
Denise Levertov
There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am.
Denise Levertov
Let me walk through the fields of paper touching with my wand dry stems and stunted butterflies.
Denise Levertov
There's in my mind a... turbulent moon-ridden girl or old woman, or both, dressed in opals and rags, feathers and torn taffeta, who knows strange songs but she is not kind.
Denise Levertov
I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.
Denise Levertov
Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
Denise Levertov
The threat of world's end is the old threat.
Denise Levertov
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
our nerve filaments twitch with its presence day and night, nothing we say has not the husky phlegm of it in the saying, nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have.
Denise Levertov
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
my pleasure was in the strength of my back, in my noble shoulders, the cool smooth flesh cylinders of my arms.
Denise Levertov
I watch the clouds as I see them in pomp advancing, pursuing the fallen sun.
Denise Levertov
The world is not with us enough. O taste and see.
Denise Levertov
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
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
