Levertov’s earlier political poems fromSorrow
Dance(‘‘Life at War,’’‘‘What Were They Like
Like?’’) to know how powerful her conceptions
in the matter can be.
In the past Denise Levertov has been able to
create a taut, carefully observed imagery which
has reminded me some what of the poetry of
William Carlos Williams; at the same time,
she never relinquished her English background.
The result was a Williams-like directness and
concreteness, combined with an ability to mod-
ulate into the sort of eloquence one finds in
Yeats’s language, for example. In the present
volume, however, the Englishness intrudes in a
new and unfortunate way. The poems tend to
become ‘‘literary,’’ establishing connections not
with experience but with other poems. The con-
nection is worked for, and acknowledged in
‘‘A Clock,’’ whose epigraph is taken from Yeats’s
‘‘A Coat.’’ But what about ‘‘Wings of a God,’’
which begins: ‘‘The beating of wings. / Unheard,’’
and goes on to suggest ‘‘Leda and the Swan’’? The
shadow of the Yeats poem overpowers Miss Lev-
ertov’s, as it would any lesser poem which insists,
as this one does, on making the comparison.
The most striking example of ‘‘literariness’’
occurs in a section of the book entitled ‘‘Four
Embroideries.’’ By invoking, in these poems, a
distant, purely conventional location (a castle
where noblewomen are busy with their needles),
Miss Levertov has sacrificed any actual sense of
location. They are caught between fairy tale and
the real world, and belong to neither. Again, this
is the sort of effect which Miss Levertov has
managed well on occasion (e.g.: the beautiful
poem fromSorrow Dance, ‘‘Psalms Concerning
the Castle’’), but which seems out of control in
the new volume.
Relearning the Alphabetstrikes me, on the
whole, as being a hurried book. In the past Miss
Levertov has always been extremely productive,
publishing a new volume regularly every two or
three years. This time I think, her insistence on
keeping up the pace has done harm to the poetry.
The title itself suggests the poet’s desire to rein-
vent her vocabulary, to learn the skills of a new
poetic language. Perhaps that explains some of
the difficulties Miss Levertov encountered here;
difficulties which might very well have been
solved with more patience.
Although I have felt the need to be critical
ofRelearning the Alphabet, I would like none-
theless to call attention to a number of poems
in the volume where Miss Levertov’s best
inspiration [is] still powerfully present: the mov-
ing poems: ‘‘He-Who-Came-Forth,’’ and ‘‘Moon
Tiger’’; the interesting long poem: ‘‘A Tree Tell-
ing of Orpheus’’; these lines about owls, from
‘‘Secret Festival; September Moon’’:
They raise
the roof of the dark; ferocious
their joy in the extreme silver
the moon has floated out from itself
luminous air in which their eyes
don’t hurt or close....
The strength of Miss Levertov’s language is
impressive in such poems. I am very sorry they
must be half-concealed among the lesser poems
which, unfortunately, take up so much place in
this volume.
Here is the final poem inRelearning the
Alphabet, which is entitled ‘‘Invocation.’’ It is
lovely and haunting; meant, one hopes, as a
promise for the future:
Silent, about-to-be-parted-from house.
Wood creaking, trying to sigh, im-
patient.
Clicking of squirrel-teeth in the attic,
Denuded beds, couches stripped of
serapes.
Deep snow shall block all entrances
and oppress the roof and darken
the windows. O Lares,
don’t leave.
The house yawns like a bear.
Guard its profound dreams for us,
that it return to us when we return.
Source:Paul Zweig, ‘‘Magistral Strokes and First Steps,’’
inNation, Vol. 212, No. 25, June 21 1971, p. 794—95.SOURCESAlighieri, Dante,The Divine Comedy: Inferno, translated
by John Ciardi, Modern Library, 1996, pp. 3–4.
Andre, Michael, ‘‘Denise Levertov: An Interview,’’ in
Conversations with Denise Levertov, edited by Jewel
Spears Brooker, University Press of Mississippi, 1998,
pp. 52–67.
Bertholf, Robert J., and Albert Gelpi, eds.,The Letters of
Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, Stanford University
Press, 2004, pp. 606–7.
Buber, Martin,Tales of the Hasidim, 2 vols., translated by
Olga Marx, Schocken Books, 1947–48.
Clottes, Jean, and David Lewis-Williams,The Shamans
of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves,
translated by Sophie Hawkes, Harry N. Abrams, 1998.A Tree Telling of Orpheus