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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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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
Dream
Smooth
Back
Shoulders
Flesh
Noble
Cool
Arms
Strength
Pleasure
Cylinders

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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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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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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 like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.
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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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Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.
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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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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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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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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.
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The artist must create himself or be born again.
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I watch the clouds as I see them in pomp advancing, pursuing the fallen sun.
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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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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.
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The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.
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The world is not with us enough. O taste and see.
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And our dreams, with what frivolity we have pared them like toenails, clipped them like ends of split hair.
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Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
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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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In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
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