Denise Levertov Summary

Biography EssayIn her prolific, highly regarded, sometimes controversial career, Denise Levertov has created a multidimensional body of poetry that is pervaded by her strong belief in her poetic vocat... Read more

In her prolific, highly regarded, sometimes controversial career, Denise Levertov has created a multidimensional body of poetry that is pervaded by her strong belief in her poetic vocation and by her ... Read more

Rexroth was an influential American poet, critic, editor, and translator, who was active in the San Francisco-based literary revival of the 1940s and 1950s. With the following review, originally publi... Read more

In this essay, Smith addresses Levertov's development as a political poet, tracing her evolution as a writer from one who creates largely mystical verse to an "engaged" author oft... Read more

Wakoski is an American poet and educator whose verse collections include The George Washington Poems (1967), Virtuoso Literature for Two and Four Hands (1975), and The Collected Greed, Parts 1-13 (198... Read more

Levine-Keating is a poet and educator who is coauthor, with Walter Levy, of Lies through Literature (1991). In this excerpt, she analyzes Levertov's depiction of "the double" in t... Read more

In the following essay, originally published in Poetry (Chicago), Levertov discusses the creation of "organic" poetry. For me, back of the idea of organic form is the concept that the... Read more

Linda Welshimer Wagner (later Linda Wagner-Martin) is an American critic, poet, and educator whose books include The Poems of William Carlos Williams (1964) and Hemingway and Faulkner: Inventors/Maste... Read more

Zweig was an American poet, translator, and critic whose books include the poetry collections Against Emptiness (1971) and The Dark Side of the Earth (1974). Here he offers an unfavorable assessment o... Read more

In this interview, originally published in New York Quarterly, Levertov explains her method of writing and also discusses various influences on her poetry, including teaching, religion, and politics. ... Read more

Critical Essay by George Bowering Denise Levertov, who has lived in America since 1948, commands the field and the grove as far as the women poets are concerned, and is among the five best poets of t... Read more

Critical Essay by Hugh Seidman As usual, Miss Levertov can demonstrate the clarity of image and illumination of experience that we have come to expect from her. Yet it is often hard not to feel that ... Read more

Critical Essay by Charles Altieri When one puts pressure on postmodern poetics by asking questions about philosophical adequacy, one immediately confronts a powerful contradiction: considered as meta... Read more

Critical Essay by Doris Earnshaw Denise Levertov was fitted by birth and political destiny to voice the terrors and pleasures of the twentieth century. Granddaughter on her father's side of a ... Read more

Critical Essay by Ingrid Rimland [In Light Up the Cave, Denise Levertov, a] noted poet with a fertile mind and unabashed emotions, treats her readers to a volume of prose about what it means to be, a... Read more

Critical Essay by Daniel Berrigan, S.j. The hallmark of Denise Levertov's prose [as in Light Up the Cave] is something so simple and elusive as clear eyed common sense. In the nature of things... Read more