Quote

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.

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
First
Kept
Glimmer
Stones
Slime
Green
Lap
Dark
Castles
Space
Vivid
Upon
Posts
Water
Stone
Firsts
Boat
Moats

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The threat of world's end is the old threat.
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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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But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.
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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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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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The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.
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Images split the truth in fractions.
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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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Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
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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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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 artist must create himself or be born again.
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Let me walk through the fields of paper touching with my wand dry stems and stunted butterflies.
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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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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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There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am.
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Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
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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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I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.
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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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