Levertov, Denise (1923-1997), was an English-born American poet and essayist known for her free verse poems. She wrote verse in natural, straightforward language that reflected her sharp powers of observation. Beginning in the 1960’s, much of Levertov’s work showed her political and social concerns. She wrote many poems that show her opposition to American participation in the Vietnam War (1957-1975). She also wrote poems on ecology, nuclear disarmament, and feminist issues. In addition, Levertov edited books of poetry and translated French poetry into English.
Levertov’s poems of the 1950’s generally show the influence of an experimental group of American poets known as the Black Mountain group. Here and Now (1957), With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (1959), The Jacob’s Ladder (1961), and O Taste and See (1964) are representative of her early poetry. She was also influenced by the American poets Wallace Stevens and, especially, William Carlos Williams.
Levertov’s social concerns about the Vietnam War, race relations in the United States, and nuclear disarmament were published in such collections as The Sorrow Dance (1966), Relearning the Alphabet (1970), and To Stay Alive (1971). She commemorated a Salvadoran archbishop and four American women murdered in El Salvador in A Door in the Hive (1989). She wrote about nature, faith, and the process of growing older in Evening Train (1992). Levertov’s final collections include The Life Around Us: Selected Poems on Nature and The Stream and the Sapphire: Selected Poems on Religious Themes (both 1997).
Levertov’s many essays have been collected in The Poet in the World (1973), Light Up the Cave (1981), and New & Selected Essays (1992). She wrote 27 autobiographical essays published as Tesserae: Memories & Suppositions (1995). Her interest in Asian religion led her to translate and edit the Hindu text In Praise of Krishna: Songs from the Bengali (1967) with Edward C. Dimock, Jr., an American scholar of Indian studies.
Levertov was born on Oct. 24, 1923, in Ilford, England. She finished her first book of poetry, The Double Image, in 1946. Levertov married the American writer Mitchell Goodman in 1947 and settled permanently in the United States in 1948. She became a United States citizen in 1955. Levertov helped found the Writers and Artists Protest Against the War in Vietnam in 1965 and participated in antiwar demonstrations. She edited a book of antiwar poetry, Out of the War Shadow (1967).
Levertov taught at several American universities and was professor of poetry at Stanford University from 1981 until her death on Dec. 20, 1997. The Letters of Denise Levertov and William Carlos Williams was published in 1998, after her death. Levertov’s Collected Poems was published in 2013.
