SOURCE: "Inside and Outside in the Poetry of Denise Levertov," in Critical Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring, 1980, pp. 57-70.

In the following essay, Surman traces the poets and principles that have influenced Levertov's work, focusing primarily on William Carlos Williams and the manner in which his ideas on perception and writing are reflected in Levertov's poetry.

I

'We awake in the same moment to ourselves and to things.' This sentence from Jacques Maritain was chosen by the Objectivist poet George Oppen as an epigraph to his book The Materials. Its presence there accents a paradox central to some of the most interesting American writing today. 'Objectivism' is a term very loosely used at present, and I can think of no better way of giving it definition, than by recalling Louis Zukofsky's gloss on the word 'Objective' in the special number of Poetry Chicago he edited in 1930. First he...