The Sorrow Dance: Poems

by Denise Levertov

Early poems from a major woman writer and activist.

Genres: Poetry

94 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

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

[Mark Valentine · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Levertov book! I have been missing out. Sure, some of the poems remain inscrutable, but most reach straight out to me. It is exciting discovering her. "Eros" is beautiful, I read "The Cat as Cat" with my cat on my lap--perfect! "The Olga Poems" is a profound tribute to her sister.

I have found a new friend!

[Ted Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I now read Denise Levertov compositely as a progression from her early to late work. I did not always read her that way. "The Sorrow Dance" which arrived well into her career was a early introduction to her work for me, maybe the first I read of her work in a thin New Directions paperback full of seemingly simple poems that were not really simple. This is a foundational work for me of her body of poems. My response to them is direct, intimate, and largely private.

[Patch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Denise levertov might be becoming a new favorite poet for me. I really liked The Cat as Cat, I think it's a really good example of a poem that says more through what it doesn't say than what it does. There's this palpable clash between the desire to put the cat into poetry out of love, but also a holding back to allow the cat the freedom to be a cat. I think this might be kind of a human condition thing (and animal to some extent), art as an expression of love clashing with the raw existence of another being. oh I also liked the mention of the Minoan snake goddess in postcards :)

[Humphrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

It doesn't have the undeniable masterpiece that Jacob's Ladder and O Taste and See do, but The Sorrow Dance is consistently strong. The grouping of all poems into sequences is an interesting touch that I found at times quite effective. I especially liked The Unknown, The Mutes, City Psalm, Didactic Poem, Second Didactic Poem, and Living.

[Eliana]

“If August passes
flowerless,
and the frosts come,

will I have learned to rejoice enough
in the sober wonder of
green healthy leaves?”

—from “Annuals”

[Gregory Kiefer · Rating 5 out of 5]

These beautiful poems range from good to staggering. This is the work that made her famous for her poems about the Vietnam War, which are certainly important and moving poems. But for me I found the real power of Levertov as a poet in the collection's smaller, more personal poems, dense with shadowy lyricism and pulsing with intimacy.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are a meadow where the bees hum,
mind and body are almost one

as the fire snaps in the stove
and our eyes close,

and mouth to mouth, the covers
pulled over our shoulders,

we drowse afield,
in accord; though the fall cold

surrounds our warm bed, and though
by day we are singular and often lonely.

- Bedtime, pg. 17

* * *

The flowerlike
animal perfume
in the god's curly
hair -

don't assume
that like a flower's
his attributed
are there to tempt

you or
direct the moth's
hunger -
simply he is
the temple of himself,

hair and hide
a sacrifice of blood and flowers
on his altar

if any worshipper
kneel or not.

- Eros, pg. 30

* * *

A headless squirrel, some blood
oozing from the unevenly
chewed-off neck

lies in rainsweet grass
near the woodshed door.
Down the driveway

the first irises
have opened since dawn,
ethereal, their mauve

almost a transparent gray,
their dark veins
bruise-blue.

- A Day Begins, pg. 45

* * *

Like dogs in Mexico,
furless, sore, misshapen,

arrives from laborious nowhere
Agony. And proves

to have eyes of kindness,
a pitiful fail; wants

love. Give it some, in form of
dry tortilla, it

grabs and runs off
three-legged, scared,

but tarries nearby and will
return. A friend.

- As It Happens, pg. 51

[Servabo · Rating 4 out of 5]

"On your hospital bed you lay in love, the hatreds that had followed you, a comet's tail, burned out as your disasters bred of love burned out, while pain and drugs quarreled like sisters in you - lay afloat on a sea of love and pain - how you always loved that cadence, 'Underneath are the everlasting arms' - all history burned out, down to the sick bone, save for that kind candle."

PERSPECTIVES ---
"The dawn alps, the stilled snake of river asleep in its wide bed, to exemplify something we desire in our own nature. Or six miles down below our hawkstill swiftness the sea wakening. And when we come to earth the roofs are made of tiles, pigeons are walking on them, little bushes become shade trees."

LIVING ---
"The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer. The wind blowing, the leaves shivering in the sun, each day the last day. A red salamander so cold and so easy to catch, dreamily moves his delicate feet and long tail. I hold my hand open for him to go. Each minute the last minute."

Stunningly beautiful and haunting poems. Her art is totally alive to each fluctuation, each breath and vibration of the atmosphere through which she habitually moves. As celebrations and rituals lifted from the midst of life in its true concreteness, her art opens new dimensions of object and situation that but for it we should never have known.

[Fredore Praltsa]

Precise language is different from elevated language, I think. The first occasionally requires the second, but the second sometimes exists of its own accord—or at least seems to do so in Levertov's poems, which often have a high/archaic register I cannot trace to any poetic goal. Why the use of "yet" for "but" or the use of "hath" for "has"? These small elevations in register accumulate like bricks in a wall between the poems and any post-19th century English audience (and Levertov wrote in the later 20th century). Seriously if anyone can tell me why she wrote this way please do (maybe there's a slight bit of humor in it? maybe she wants to cultivate a distance?). But even if I understood the purpose, these poems would not work for me. Good poetry, I think, should sound like human speech. Precise, maybe intelligent speech. But speech. (When you talk about a poem, you talk about its "speaker.") This is not an incredibly limiting demand, given the great diversity of human speech. My professors, my friends, my childhood soccer coach, and the multitude of cow owners on my For You Page all talk differently, but their words are alive. None of them says "hath." Levertov uses brilliantly precise language, though, and when that precision comes without unnecessary elevation, the results are impressive ("To Speak," "A Vision").

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated some of the poems, but others were impenetrable in meaning. Ms. Levertov would find a peer in E.E. Cummings, but with more respect for conventional English grammar.

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can't go wrong reading the poetry of Levertov. Very worthwhile and inspiring.

[Jordan St. Stier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very luminous poetry, almost reminiscent of water rolling down a window-pane.

[Lachelle Seville · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely re-introduction to reading poetry for me. I love/hate how timeless Vietnam era poetry is.

[meggggg · Rating 5 out of 5]

gawd!! so stunning

[Sav Grinspun · Rating 5 out of 5]

the olga poems 3

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“She is totally alive,” says Ralph Mills, Jr. in his book Contemporary American Poetry, “to each fluctuation, each breath and vibration of the atmosphere through which she habitually moves. As celebrations and rituals lifted from the midst of life in its true concreteness, her art opens new dimensions of object and situation that but for it we should never have known.”

Favorite Poems:
“A Man”
“Living While It May”
“The Mutes”
“A Lamentation”
“Two Variations”

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Levertov gives us a brilliant collection of powerfully original poems. Easy to read and consistent.