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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

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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
Delphi
Spring
Prayed
Poet
Apollo
Poetry
Drank
Prayer
Flame
Flames
Maintain
Brackish
Poem

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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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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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Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
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Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
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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'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.
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Both art and faith are dependent on imagination both are ventures into the unknown.
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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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Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow.
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I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.
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The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.
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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.
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Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
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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.
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I watch the clouds as I see them in pomp advancing, pursuing the fallen sun.
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Let the space under the first storey be dark, let the water lap the stone posts, and vivid green slime glimmer upon them let a boat be kept there.
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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.
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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.
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Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.
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