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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
Insofar
Awaken
Shock
Function
Poetry
Means
Social
Mean
Sleepers
More quotes by 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
Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow.
Denise Levertov
Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
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
Love is a landscape the long mountains define but don't shut off from the unseeable distance.
Denise Levertov
Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak of our own doubts, while dubiously we mother man in his doubt!
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
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
But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.
Denise Levertov
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
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.
Denise Levertov
Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.
Denise Levertov
Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
Denise Levertov
Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
Denise Levertov
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
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
Beespittle, droppings, hairs of beefur: all become honey. Virulent micro-organisms cannot survive in honey.
Denise Levertov
The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.
Denise Levertov
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.
Denise Levertov
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
