Denise Levertov Quotes - Page 2

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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.

  Denise Levertov

  Imagination, Mediocrity, Capacity

  Denise Levertov (1973). “The poet in the world”, New Directions Publishing Corporation

  15 Copy quote

• slowly the pale
  dew-beads of light
  lapped up from flowers
  can thicken,
  darken to gold:
  honey of the human.

  Denise Levertov

  Flower, Light, Gold

  Denise Levertov (2003). “Selected Poems”, p.63, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.

  Denise Levertov

  Walking, Knows

  Denise Levertov (2003). “Selected Poems”, p.13, New Directions Publishing

  28 Copy quote

• I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.

  Denise Levertov

  Lying, Found, Repose

  Denise Levertov (2003). “Selected Poems”, p.13, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• Writing poetry is a process of discovery...you can smell the poem before you see it....Like some animal.

  Denise Levertov

  Writing, Animal, Discovery

  5 Copy quote

• 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 into 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.

  Denise Levertov

  Eye, Past, Echoes

  Denise Levertov (1998). “Sands of the Well”, p.91, New Directions Publishing

  13 Copy quote

• Love is a landscape the long mountains
  define but don't
  shut off from the
  unseeable distance.

  Denise Levertov

  Love, Distance, Long

  Denise Levertov (1983). “Poems of Denise Levertov, 1960-1967”, p.76, New Directions Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• Very few people really see things unless they've had someone in early life who made them look at things. And name them too. But the looking is primary, the focus.

  Denise Levertov

  Life, Names, People

  9 Copy quote

• We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.

  Denise Levertov

  Loss, Admitting, Disaster

  Denise Levertov (1997). “The Life Around Us: Selected Poems on Nature”, p.75, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• The AvowalAs swimmers dareto lie face to the skyand water bears them,as hawks rest upon airand air sustains them;so would I learn to attain freefall, and floatinto Creator Spirit's deep embrace,knowing no effort earnsthat all-surrounding grace.

  Denise Levertov

  Lying, Air, Knowing

  Denise Levertov, “The Avowal”

  14 Copy quote

• The artist must create himself or be born again.

  Denise Levertov

  Art, Artist, Born Again

  Denise Levertov (1981). “Light Up the Cave”, p.39, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• When you're really caught up in writing a poem, it can be a form of prayer. I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer. I feel it in different degrees and not with every poem. But in certain ways writing is a form of prayer.

  Denise Levertov

  Prayer, Writing, Degrees

  7 Copy quote

• There comes a time when only anger is love.

  Denise Levertov

  There Comes A Time

  Denise Levertov (1987). “Poems 1968-1972”, p.106, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• At Delphi I prayed
  to Apollo
  that he maintain in me
  the flame of the poem
  and I drank of the brackish
  spring there.

  Denise Levertov

  Prayer, Spring, Flames

  Denise Levertov (1983). “Poems of Denise Levertov, 1960-1967”, p.140, New Directions Publishing

  14 Copy quote

• Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it.

  Denise Levertov

  Encouragement, Imagination, Affliction

  Denise Levertov (1992). “New & Selected Essays”, p.145, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• There's in my mind a... turbulent moon-ridden girl or old woman, or both, dressed in opals and rags, feathers and torn taffeta, who knows strange songs but she is not kind.

  Denise Levertov

  Girl, Song, Moon

  Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, Paul A. Lacey (2003). “Selected Poems”, p.43, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• my pleasure
  was in the strength of my back,
  in my noble shoulders, the cool
  smooth flesh cylinders of my arms.

  Denise Levertov

  Dream, Noble, Flesh

  Denise Levertov (1967). “The Sorrow Dance: Poems”, [New York] : New Directions

  15 Copy quote

• Prophetic utterance, like poetic utterance, transforms experience and moves the receiver to new attitudes. The kinds of experience--the recognitions or revelations--out of which both prophecy and poetry emerge, are such as to stir the prophet or poet to speech that may exceed their own known capacities; they are "inspired," they breathe in revelation and breathe out new words; and by so doing they transfer over to the listener or reader a parallel experience, a parallel intensity, which impels that person into new attitudes and new actions.

  Denise Levertov

  Attitude, Moving, Poetry

  10 Copy quote

• It is fatal to one's artistic life to talk about something that is in process.

  Denise Levertov

  Artistic Life, Artistic, Process

  "Conversations with Denise Levertov".

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Denise Levertov

  Flower, Night, Doors

  Denise Levertov (1998). “Sands of the Well”, p.5, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.

  Denise Levertov

  August, Breathe, Sweetness

  Denise Levertov (1983). “Poems of Denise Levertov, 1960-1967”, p.55, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• If woman is inconstant, good, I am faithful to ebb and flow, I fall in season and now is a time of ripening.

  Denise Levertov

  Women, Fall, Ebb And Flow

  Denise Levertov (1983). “Poems of Denise Levertov, 1960-1967”, p.155, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• An absolute
  patience.
  Trees stand
  up to their knees in
  fog. The fog
  slowly flows
  uphill.
  White
  cobwebs, the grass
  leaning where deer
  have looked for apples.
  The woods
  from brook to where
  the top of the hill looks
  over the fog, send up
  not one bird.
  So absolute, it is
  no other than
  happiness itself, a breathing
  too quiet to hear.

  Denise Levertov

  Fog, Breathing, White

  35 Copy quote

• We are so many
  and many within themselves
  travel to far islands but no one
  asks for their story.

  Denise Levertov

  Travel, Islands, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• Beespittle, droppings, hairs
  of beefur: all become honey.
  Virulent micro-organisms cannot
  survive in honey.

  Denise Levertov

  Hair, Honey, Dropping

  Denise Levertov (1983). “Poems of Denise Levertov, 1960-1967”, p.213, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

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