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Sands of the Well
An eight-section collection of spiritual and insightful poetry deals with issues of and perspectives on the natural world, belief, memory, aging, and music.
- GenresPoetry
136 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
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143 people want to read
About the author
Denise Levertov
198 books170 followersAmerican 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
January 22, 2022
In each mind, even the most candid,
there are forests, where needled haze overshadows
the slippery duff and patches of snow long-frozen,
or else where mangroves, proliferant, vine-entwisted,
loom over warm mud that slowly bubbles.
In these forests there live certain events, shards
of memory, scraps of once-heard lore, intimations
once familiar—some painful, shameful, some
drably or laughably inconsequent, others
thoughts that the thinker
could never hold fast and begin to tell.
And some—a few—that are noble, tender,
and so complete in themselves, they had
no need of saying
there are forests, where needled haze overshadows
the slippery duff and patches of snow long-frozen,
or else where mangroves, proliferant, vine-entwisted,
loom over warm mud that slowly bubbles.
In these forests there live certain events, shards
of memory, scraps of once-heard lore, intimations
once familiar—some painful, shameful, some
drably or laughably inconsequent, others
thoughts that the thinker
could never hold fast and begin to tell.
And some—a few—that are noble, tender,
and so complete in themselves, they had
no need of saying
February 9, 2015
A Gift
Just when you seem to yourself
Nothing but a flimsy web
Of questions, you are given
The questions of others to hold
In the emptiness of your hands,
Songbird eggs that can still hatch
If you keep them warm,
Butterflies opening and closing themselves
In your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
Their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
As if they were answers
To all you ask. Yes, perhaps
This gift is your answer.
This was published a year or two before the poet died, and is filled with such vivid awe of nature and of spirit. There was no poem in this collection that didn't move me. Just, wow. Of a dream, "after I woke, wondering still/what in me he was, and who/ the I was that took that long short-cut with him..."; of impending death, "...A sunset of such aqueous hints, subdued/ opaline gleamings,/ in this green symbiosis of elder and wildening rose, the evening wind is pulsing/...for the first time, the certainty of return/to this imprinted scene, unchanging but for the height/ of green thicket, rising year by year beyond the cobwebbed windowpanes,/ can not be assumed." I think she invents words like wildening that quietly describes simple beauty and attaches it to the world, to love, to dying and aging, to faith. About our connection to the sea, to nature: "When distant ocean's big V of silver/reaches straight up, rearing/between the hills that hold it,/don't' you feel you could go and go/swift as a hurricane till you/flung yourself at its wall..." About fading memory: "In each mind, even the most candid,/there are forests, where needled haze overshadows/ the slippery duff...or else where mangroves, proliferant, vine-entwisted,/ loom over warm mud that slowly bubbles...privacies and the deep terrain to received them." Each time I reread a poem, it becomes my favorite.
In Summer
When the light, late in the afternoon, pauses among
The highest branches of the highest trees,
They stir a little, as if in pleasure. Light and a passing breeze
Become one and the same, a caress. Then the lower branches,
Leaves, or needles in shadow, take up the lilt
Of that response, their green with a hint of blue forming
What, if it were sound, could be called
A chord with the almost yellow of those
The sunlight tarries with.
Agon
The sea was barely crinkled, breathing
Calmly. Islands and shore
Pure darkness, uncompromised,
Outline and mass without
Perplexity of component forms,
The salt grasses at water’s edge
A frieze, immobile. All of this
A visible gravity,
Not sad but serious.
And above,
The light to which this somber peace
Has not yet awoken, the sun
Struggling to rise as one fights sometimes
To break out of fearful dreams
Unable to shout or move- and clouds
In delicate brilliance sweeping
Long aquiline curves, wild arabesques
Across the east, drinking the rising
Light, light, as it streams
Out from that mortal struggle from which
The sun is already gasping free.
Like Noah’s Rainbow
And again-after an absence
Of months, first his, then mine-
When I return greyhearted
To the sunny shore, and find
St. Simon Heron has returned too:
That startled, glad
Intake of breath, that sense
Of blessing! Surely these sightings,
Familiar but always
Strange with unearned joy,
Are a sign of a covenant it’s
Grossly churlish to disregard. Heavily,
I begin to lift my wings.
Looking, Walking, Being
I look and look.
Looking’s a way of being: one becomes,
Sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.
The eyes
Dig and burrow in the world.
They touch
Fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
World and the past of it,
Not only
Visible present, solid and shadow
That looks at one looking.
And language? Rhythms
Of echo and interruption?
That’s
A way of breathing,
breathing to sustain
Looking,
Walking and looking,
Through the world,
In it.
Primary Wonder
Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; caps and bells.
And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, 0 Lord,
Creator, Hallowed one, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
Just when you seem to yourself
Nothing but a flimsy web
Of questions, you are given
The questions of others to hold
In the emptiness of your hands,
Songbird eggs that can still hatch
If you keep them warm,
Butterflies opening and closing themselves
In your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
Their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
As if they were answers
To all you ask. Yes, perhaps
This gift is your answer.
This was published a year or two before the poet died, and is filled with such vivid awe of nature and of spirit. There was no poem in this collection that didn't move me. Just, wow. Of a dream, "after I woke, wondering still/what in me he was, and who/ the I was that took that long short-cut with him..."; of impending death, "...A sunset of such aqueous hints, subdued/ opaline gleamings,/ in this green symbiosis of elder and wildening rose, the evening wind is pulsing/...for the first time, the certainty of return/to this imprinted scene, unchanging but for the height/ of green thicket, rising year by year beyond the cobwebbed windowpanes,/ can not be assumed." I think she invents words like wildening that quietly describes simple beauty and attaches it to the world, to love, to dying and aging, to faith. About our connection to the sea, to nature: "When distant ocean's big V of silver/reaches straight up, rearing/between the hills that hold it,/don't' you feel you could go and go/swift as a hurricane till you/flung yourself at its wall..." About fading memory: "In each mind, even the most candid,/there are forests, where needled haze overshadows/ the slippery duff...or else where mangroves, proliferant, vine-entwisted,/ loom over warm mud that slowly bubbles...privacies and the deep terrain to received them." Each time I reread a poem, it becomes my favorite.
In Summer
When the light, late in the afternoon, pauses among
The highest branches of the highest trees,
They stir a little, as if in pleasure. Light and a passing breeze
Become one and the same, a caress. Then the lower branches,
Leaves, or needles in shadow, take up the lilt
Of that response, their green with a hint of blue forming
What, if it were sound, could be called
A chord with the almost yellow of those
The sunlight tarries with.
Agon
The sea was barely crinkled, breathing
Calmly. Islands and shore
Pure darkness, uncompromised,
Outline and mass without
Perplexity of component forms,
The salt grasses at water’s edge
A frieze, immobile. All of this
A visible gravity,
Not sad but serious.
And above,
The light to which this somber peace
Has not yet awoken, the sun
Struggling to rise as one fights sometimes
To break out of fearful dreams
Unable to shout or move- and clouds
In delicate brilliance sweeping
Long aquiline curves, wild arabesques
Across the east, drinking the rising
Light, light, as it streams
Out from that mortal struggle from which
The sun is already gasping free.
Like Noah’s Rainbow
And again-after an absence
Of months, first his, then mine-
When I return greyhearted
To the sunny shore, and find
St. Simon Heron has returned too:
That startled, glad
Intake of breath, that sense
Of blessing! Surely these sightings,
Familiar but always
Strange with unearned joy,
Are a sign of a covenant it’s
Grossly churlish to disregard. Heavily,
I begin to lift my wings.
Looking, Walking, Being
I look and look.
Looking’s a way of being: one becomes,
Sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.
The eyes
Dig and burrow in the world.
They touch
Fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
World and the past of it,
Not only
Visible present, solid and shadow
That looks at one looking.
And language? Rhythms
Of echo and interruption?
That’s
A way of breathing,
breathing to sustain
Looking,
Walking and looking,
Through the world,
In it.
Primary Wonder
Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; caps and bells.
And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, 0 Lord,
Creator, Hallowed one, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
November 14, 2017
Sands of the Well
The golden particles
descend, descend,
traverse the water’s
depth and come to rest
on the level bed
of the well until,
the full descent
accomplished, water’s
absolute transparence
is complete, unclouded
by constellations
of bright sand.
Is this
the place where you
are brought in meditation?
Transparency
seen for itself—
as if its quality
were not, after all,
to enable
perception not of itself?
With a wand
of willow I again
trouble the envisioned pool,
the cloudy nebulae
form and disperse,
the separate
grains again
slowly, slowly
perform their descent,
and again
stillness ensues,
and the mystery
of that sheer
clarity, is it water indeed,
or air, or light?
which passed us
in immense shoals, glittering
in the Sea, like fire …
As the Moon Was Waning
Small intimations of destiny wove
a hammock about me out of fine
wiry fibers, a steel gossamer swaying
calmly in chaos. What I needed
was to examine it inch by inch,
discover it true or false, shelter or prison.
Instead, I lay low, evasive,
imagining mortal weariness that it’s not yet time for.
Only the neighbor’s new, very delicate, distant,
mercurial windbells promised,
if not tonight, then some night soon, to recall me
to that scrutiny, that obligation deferred—
as if their music,
sparse, random, uninsistent, nevertheless
would prove, in time,
a summons I’d not resist.
A Gift
Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.
The golden particles
descend, descend,
traverse the water’s
depth and come to rest
on the level bed
of the well until,
the full descent
accomplished, water’s
absolute transparence
is complete, unclouded
by constellations
of bright sand.
Is this
the place where you
are brought in meditation?
Transparency
seen for itself—
as if its quality
were not, after all,
to enable
perception not of itself?
With a wand
of willow I again
trouble the envisioned pool,
the cloudy nebulae
form and disperse,
the separate
grains again
slowly, slowly
perform their descent,
and again
stillness ensues,
and the mystery
of that sheer
clarity, is it water indeed,
or air, or light?
which passed us
in immense shoals, glittering
in the Sea, like fire …
As the Moon Was Waning
Small intimations of destiny wove
a hammock about me out of fine
wiry fibers, a steel gossamer swaying
calmly in chaos. What I needed
was to examine it inch by inch,
discover it true or false, shelter or prison.
Instead, I lay low, evasive,
imagining mortal weariness that it’s not yet time for.
Only the neighbor’s new, very delicate, distant,
mercurial windbells promised,
if not tonight, then some night soon, to recall me
to that scrutiny, that obligation deferred—
as if their music,
sparse, random, uninsistent, nevertheless
would prove, in time,
a summons I’d not resist.
A Gift
Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.
May 13, 2009
This includes my favorite poem by Denise Levertov: "On Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus."
September 18, 2013
Small poems of staggering, gently heart-wrenching beauty. Passionate and critical but still soft-spoken and kind. Very highly recommended.
November 12, 2020
A beautiful book from near the end of this poet's life and career that finds her deeply engaged with the natural world, at odds with human progress and so-called development while finding deep inspiration and spirituality among mountains and trees.
February 15, 2025
“The yellow tulip in the room’s warmth opens. Can I say it, and not seem to taunt all who live in torment? Believe it, yet remain aware of the world’s anguish?”
January 30, 2014
I had heard Levertov's poetry to be inconsistent in quality, or at least criticized by former supporters (most notably Robert Duncan), but decided to buy Sands of the Well after flipping through the table of contents and seeing 1. A section called Anamnesis 2. A poem written after Schnittke 3. A poem called Meeting the Ferret 4. A poem called Conversion of Brother Lawrence Once again, she's all over the place, stylistically, and with subject and tone.
Favorites:
Wondering
The Danger Moments
A Gift
Rage and Relenting
Pentimento
Bearing the Light
Agon
Meeting the Ferret
Sojourns in the Parallel World
In the Woods
The Change
Something More
The Past III
Anamnesis at the Faultline
Time Retrieved
A South Winds
Witness: Incommunicado
Writer and Reader
Conversion of Brother Lawrence
On the Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus
Psalm Fragments (Schnittke String Trio)
A Yellow Tulip
Altars
To Live in the Mercy of God
Favorites:
Wondering
The Danger Moments
A Gift
Rage and Relenting
Pentimento
Bearing the Light
Agon
Meeting the Ferret
Sojourns in the Parallel World
In the Woods
The Change
Something More
The Past III
Anamnesis at the Faultline
Time Retrieved
A South Winds
Witness: Incommunicado
Writer and Reader
Conversion of Brother Lawrence
On the Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus
Psalm Fragments (Schnittke String Trio)
A Yellow Tulip
Altars
To Live in the Mercy of God
December 21, 2012
And then-"Primary Wonder"
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes...
Are some intricate minds-"On the Physical Resurrection of Christ"
nourished
on concept,
as epiphytes flourish
high in the canopy?
How good it would be to spend such a night-"Hymns to Darkness"
wholly attentive to its obscurity,
without thought of history, of words like
Dark Ages, Enlightenment, or especially
Contemporary, the shameful news each day.
then something tethered-"Sojourns in the Parallel World"
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
November 15, 2012
Sands of the Well is probably one of the first books of poetry that I have read since college and Denise Levertov did not disappoint. Perhaps not ever poem was a home run but in her collection there exist such poems which make your soul reverberate because the words hit a chord and the sound and emotion is felt throughout your being.
Favorite Poems: "Looking, Walking, Being", "The Visual Element", "Complaint and Rejoiner"
Favorite quote: The world in not something to look at, it is something to be in.
Favorite Poems: "Looking, Walking, Being", "The Visual Element", "Complaint and Rejoiner"
Favorite quote: The world in not something to look at, it is something to be in.
Read
October 12, 2012Imagine the down of black swans.
Hidden beneath the smooth layers
of black breast-feathers, preened by red beaks.
That's the tender dark of certain nights
in summer, when the moon's away,
stars invisible over the moist
low roof of fog.
How good it would be to spend such a night
wholly attentive to its obscurity,
without thought of history, of words like
Dark Ages, Enlightenment, or especially
Contemporary, the shameful news each day.
Wholly present to the beneficent
swansdown grace of a single night,
unlit by even a candle.
From "Hymns to Darkness" by Denise Levertov
Hidden beneath the smooth layers
of black breast-feathers, preened by red beaks.
That's the tender dark of certain nights
in summer, when the moon's away,
stars invisible over the moist
low roof of fog.
How good it would be to spend such a night
wholly attentive to its obscurity,
without thought of history, of words like
Dark Ages, Enlightenment, or especially
Contemporary, the shameful news each day.
Wholly present to the beneficent
swansdown grace of a single night,
unlit by even a candle.
From "Hymns to Darkness" by Denise Levertov
August 27, 2022
Immersed.
I am in the forest and waters of the Pacific Northwest in all its moods. I feel its spirit moving through landscapes and creatures that inhabit them. Spirit is always moving. I feel the falling of what is unseen but perceived and resist it as the rock does the falls in "To Live in the Mercy of God." Or is my falling that God resists? Levertov questions as she accepts. Her poems guide us in a faith that goes beyond religion in one unassuming but subtle image after another.
And readers of poetry and those who wonder how poetry works will find a most concise interpretation complete with a Biblical analogy of walking on water in "Poetics of Faith."
A book to be read again.
I am in the forest and waters of the Pacific Northwest in all its moods. I feel its spirit moving through landscapes and creatures that inhabit them. Spirit is always moving. I feel the falling of what is unseen but perceived and resist it as the rock does the falls in "To Live in the Mercy of God." Or is my falling that God resists? Levertov questions as she accepts. Her poems guide us in a faith that goes beyond religion in one unassuming but subtle image after another.
And readers of poetry and those who wonder how poetry works will find a most concise interpretation complete with a Biblical analogy of walking on water in "Poetics of Faith."
A book to be read again.
May 10, 2023
There’s a kind of despair, when your friends
are scattered across the world; you see
how therefore never is there a way
each can envision truly
the others of whom you speak.
Oceans divide your life,
you want to place all of it—
people, places, their tones, atmospheres,
everything shared uniquely with each—
into a single bowl, like petals, like sand
in a pail. No one can ever hear or tell
the whole story.
(And do you really think
this would not be so if you lived
all of your life on an island,
in a village too small to contain
a single stranger?)
are scattered across the world; you see
how therefore never is there a way
each can envision truly
the others of whom you speak.
Oceans divide your life,
you want to place all of it—
people, places, their tones, atmospheres,
everything shared uniquely with each—
into a single bowl, like petals, like sand
in a pail. No one can ever hear or tell
the whole story.
(And do you really think
this would not be so if you lived
all of your life on an island,
in a village too small to contain
a single stranger?)
May 11, 2021
"When the world comes to you muffled as through a glass / darkly—jubilance, anguish, declined into / faded postcards—remember how, seventeen, you said / you no longer felt or saw with the old / intensity, and knew that the flamelight / would not rekindle; and how Bet scoffed / and refused to believe you. And how many thousand times, / burning with joy or despair, you've known she was right" (16).
SO. GOOD. Levertov revives my faith and imagination.
SO. GOOD. Levertov revives my faith and imagination.
December 28, 2024
nice and quiet, a lot about nature.
favourites include flowers before dark (flowers are that blunt!), a wren (yay wren, yay the small making you feel transparent), the change (it's so melancholy i don't want to like it), a south wind (it's true that grass can be the clearest part of memory), 'in whom we live and move and have our being' (it's a nice feeling after reading), sands of the well (nice clear image).
favourites include flowers before dark (flowers are that blunt!), a wren (yay wren, yay the small making you feel transparent), the change (it's so melancholy i don't want to like it), a south wind (it's true that grass can be the clearest part of memory), 'in whom we live and move and have our being' (it's a nice feeling after reading), sands of the well (nice clear image).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 11, 2019
Amazing. Mind blowing. Thanks to the Poetry Foundation's Poem of the Day, I discovered her, very late in life. I want to read all her poetry books. I want to own them, to treasure and re-read them. Stunning.
October 27, 2020
I particularly liked Denise's leanings into animism, and the ultimate thesis of this collection: awe.
My favorite poem here is The Sea Inland. My favorite section is Sojourns In the Parallel World.
My favorite poem here is The Sea Inland. My favorite section is Sojourns In the Parallel World.
April 7, 2018
Each poem is sublime, each word magic-not just by its usage but by the exactness of it in the poems. Thank you Denise Levertov!
January 9, 2022
Some of these poems were dry, but some of them took me to the next level. Definitely worth reading for those extra-dimensional moments.
July 15, 2024
Wonderful poetry. My first exposure to Danise, and I loved her. There is a wonderful poem about Brother Lawrence that was probably my favorite.
June 4, 2025
The Glittering Noise, ugh
January 30, 2011
The problem with poetry books for me is that they usually end up with three (of five) stars because half of them I like, and the other half I hate. Once again, a poetry book fell in the middle. So many of them were gorgeous, but a lot of them were about Levertov's view on religion/faith, which is was... weird. Her’s is like zen, with a little Catholicism in it. That or it was a poem dedicated to someone. There's nothing wrong with dedicating a poem to someone, but... publishing it? Doesn't it lose it's meaning to that person if you do that? It would for me.
Writer and Reader seemed written for me. Again, this turned out to be a mix of likes and dislikes for me. Overall, I think I’d probably recommend a different poetry book to someone, and not this one.
(Favs: A Gift, Complaint and Rejoinder, The Past III, The Change, Unaccompanied, Looking, Walking, Being, The Hymn, Writer and Reader, Poetics and Faith, Psalm Fragments (Schnittke String Trio), The Prayer Plant and Sands of the Well)
Writer and Reader seemed written for me. Again, this turned out to be a mix of likes and dislikes for me. Overall, I think I’d probably recommend a different poetry book to someone, and not this one.
(Favs: A Gift, Complaint and Rejoinder, The Past III, The Change, Unaccompanied, Looking, Walking, Being, The Hymn, Writer and Reader, Poetics and Faith, Psalm Fragments (Schnittke String Trio), The Prayer Plant and Sands of the Well)
October 12, 2011
I think Denise Levertov and I are such very different people that I'm almost not a competent judge of her work. The themes she explores in this collection - one of them is awe, particularly awe at the natural world - are just themes I don't really care about. I thought the more socially-engaged poetry was interesting, and often striking, but so much else is the kind of nature poetry that comes off as slightly . . . limp, I guess. Presumably, the nature poetry connects with the explicitly religious poetry that ends the volume, and I did rather like those poems even if none of them is exactly "Batter my heart, three-person'd god" or "The Windhover." Her poetry, nevertheless, approaches mysticism . . . which I'm not Rousseauian enough to be okay with.
January 22, 2008
was not that great but it was worth reading.
April 14, 2013
beautiful
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