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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
Function
Poetry
Means
Social
Mean
Sleepers
Insofar
Awaken
Shock

More quotes by Denise Levertov

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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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In June the bush we call alder was heavy, listless, its leaves studded with galls, growing wherever we didn't want it.
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Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
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Beespittle, droppings, hairs of beefur: all become honey. Virulent micro-organisms cannot survive in honey.
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Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.
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slowly the pale dew-beads of light lapped up from flowers can thicken, darken to gold: honey of the human.
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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.
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Wear scarlet! Tear the green lemons off the tree! I don't want to forget who I am, what has burned in me, and hang limp and clean, an empty dress -
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The threat of world's end is the old threat.
Denise Levertov
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Love is a landscape the long mountains define but don't shut off from the unseeable distance.
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Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
Denise Levertov
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Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow.
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The vast silence of Buddha overtakes and overrules the oncoming roar of tragic life that fills alleys and avenues it blocks the way of pedicabs, police, convoys.
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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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The artist must create himself or be born again.
Denise Levertov
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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.
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Both art and faith are dependent on imagination both are ventures into the unknown.
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Images split the truth in fractions.
Denise Levertov
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And our dreams, with what frivolity we have pared them like toenails, clipped them like ends of split hair.
Denise Levertov
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In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
Denise Levertov