Denise Levertov: We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly admitting ourse...

You have come to the shore. There are no instructions.

Denise Levertov

shore instruction

Both art and faith are dependent on imagination; both are ventures into the unknown.

Denise Levertov

venture imagination art

I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer.

Denise Levertov

praying prayer writing

Nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have.

Denise Levertov

quickness utopian

Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.

Denise Levertov

grief night fall

It's when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart.

Denise Levertov

self mind heart

A poet articulating the dreads and horrors of our time is necessary in order to make readers understand what is happening, really understand it, not just know about it but feel it: and should be accompanied by a willingness on the part of those who write it to take additional action towards stopping the great miseries which they record.

Denise Levertov

stopping writing order

I believe every space and comma is a living part of the poem and has its function, just as every muscle and pore of the body has its function. And the way the lines are broken is a functioning part essential to the life of the poem.

Denise Levertov

space broken believe

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

mediocrity imagination capacity

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.

Denise Levertov

clothes offering memories

Marvelous Truth, confront us at every turn, in every guise.

Denise Levertov

marvelous guise turns

Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.

Denise Levertov

wonder night years

One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.

Denise Levertov

language writing world

In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.

Denise Levertov

prayer healing writing

What I heard was my whole self saying and singing what it knew: I can.

Denise Levertov

singing self heard

The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion...elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant.

Denise Levertov

elements poet kind

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

Denise Levertov

knows walking

Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.

Denise Levertov

function social mean

But we have only begun to love the earth. We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life. How could we tire of hope?-so much is in bud.

Denise Levertov

fullness-of-life bud inspirational

There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am.

Denise Levertov

salt women sweet

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