Quote

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

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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
Would
Knowing
Creator
Face
Embrace
Lying
Bears
Swimmers
Faces
Air
Sustains
Upon
Deep
Swimmer
Water
Rest
Hawks
Learn
Grace
Surrounding
Spirit
Effort
Attain

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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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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.
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Both art and faith are dependent on imagination both are ventures into the unknown.
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The artist must create himself or be born again.
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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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Love is a landscape the long mountains define but don't shut off from the unseeable distance.
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In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
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Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
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The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.
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But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.
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The world is not with us enough. O taste and see.
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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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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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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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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
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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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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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my pleasure was in the strength of my back, in my noble shoulders, the cool smooth flesh cylinders of my arms.
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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Let me walk through the fields of paper touching with my wand dry stems and stunted butterflies.
Denise Levertov