Candles in Babylon

by Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov’s  Candles in Babylon  evinces both the inner strength gained by a life of social commitment and the quiet wisdom born of solitude. The seventy-one poems in the book―her first full collection since  Life in the Forest  (1978)― are grouped into several thematic sections that explore by turns the subtleties in the shifting balance between our public and private selves, the poet’s voice ranging from the wry satire of her “Pig Dreams” sequence to the resonant grandeur of her six-part “Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus.” Behind it all is the gentle melancholy of the title poem and the poet’s vision of peace.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1982

About the author

American poet Denise Levertov was born in Ilford, Essex, England. Her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, was Welsh. Her father, Paul Levertoff, from Germany migrated to England as a Russian Hassidic Jew, who, after converting to Christianity, became an Anglican parson. At the age of 12, she sent some of her poems to T. S. Eliot, who replied with a two-page letter of encouragement. In 1940, when she was 17, Levertov published her first poem.

During the Blitz, Levertov served in London as a civilian nurse. Her first book, The Double Image, was published six years later. In 1947 she married American writer Mitchell Goodman and moved with him to the United States in the following year. Although Levertov and Goodman would eventually divorce, they had a son, Nickolai, and lived mainly in New York City, summering in Maine. In 1955, she became a naturalized American citizen.

During the 1960s and 70s, Levertov became much more politically active in her life and work. As poetry editor for The Nation, she was able to support and publish the work of feminist and other leftist activist poets. The Vietnam War was an especially important focus of her poetry, which often tried to weave together the personal and political, as in her poem "The Sorrow Dance," which speaks of her sister's death. Also in response to the Vietnam War, Levertov joined the War Resister’s League.

Much of the latter part of Levertov’s life was spent in education. After moving to Massachusetts, Levertov taught at Brandeis University, MIT and Tufts University. On the West Coast, she had a part-time teaching stint at the University of Washington and for 11 years (1982-1993) held a full professorship at Stanford University. In 1984 she received a Litt. D. from Bates College. After retiring from teaching, she traveled for a year doing poetry readings in the U.S. and England.

In 1997, Denise Levertov died at the age of 74 from complications due to lymphoma. She was buried at Lake View Cemetery in Seattle, Washington.

Levertov wrote and published 20 books of poetry, criticism, translations. She also edited several anthologies. Among her many awards and honors, she received the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Frost Medal, the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Lannan Award, a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Reviews

[Kate Savage · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stayed arm's length from Levertov. Her poetry didn't draw me in the way others have. But I did appreciate how she wrote about the terrors of the nuclear age, alongside the joys of befriending a pig. Like Orwell, she was torn between 'saving the world and savoring the world,' attending to the horror of suffering systematically unleashed on others, and noticing the small beauties around her.

I chose this particular collection at random. It's probably best to read a curated collection of her poems instead (though then you'd probably miss what she has to say about pet pigs).

Talk in the Dark

We live in history, says one.
We’re flies on the hide of Leviathan, says another.

Either way, says one,
fears and losses.

And among losses, says another,
the special places our own roads were to lead to.

Our deaths, says one.
That’s right, says another,
now it’s to be a mass death.

Mass graves, says one, are nothing new.
No, says another, but this time there’ll be no graves,
all the dead will lie where they fall.

Except, says one, those that burn to ash.
And are blown in the fiery wind, says another.

How can we live in this fear? says one.
From day to day, says another.

I still want to see, says one,
where my own road’s going.

I want to live, says another, but where can I live
if the world is gone?

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

there's a certain tenderness in Levertov that speaks a humaneness in stillness, yet even so, it comes from a lens of such privilege; as i read through it it becomes slight unbearable - a lyrical gift that felt.. distant. don't get me wrong, i think she should be valued for her principled stand against language poetry. considering the ascendency of Language poetry in the academy and in the poetry establishment generally, her opposition to it appears to be one more reason for her eclipse. Levertov herself was acutely aware of her own privilege, and her engagement with feminism and political poetry was marked by ambivalence, yet really, dismissed as insufficiently radical or theoretically sophisticated..

[Tiago Mont089 · Rating 5 out of 5]

O meu novo amor poético, Denise Levertov Stan Forever<3

[Connor Baldwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shoutout Denise Levertov... some of the best of American poetry