to her that in ‘‘A Tree Telling of Orpheus,’’ the
awakening of the tree to consciousness serves as
a metaphor for the political awakening of the
1960s generation through becoming involved in
the antiwar movement. Unfortunately, no
immediate reply by Levertov, which might have
indicated her agreement or disagreement with
the suggestion, survives. The poem seems, how-
ever, more to look forward to her later religious
poetry, rather than to be closely associated with
her protest writing and activity.
CRITICAL OVERVIEWUndoubtedly the earliest criticism of ‘‘A Tree
Telling of Orpheus’’ came from Levertov’s friend
and colleague Robert Duncan, a Black Mountain
poet. Levertov sent him the original chapbook
publication of the poem, which he in turn read
out to his friends in the milieu of the San Fran-
cisco Renaissance. In a letter to Levertov of Feb-
ruary 26, 1968 (published in the collection of their
correspondence,The Letters of Robert Duncan
and Denise Levertov, edited by Robert Bertholf
and Albert Gelpi), Duncan praises the structure
and lyrical quality of the poem but mainly reads
it as an allegory, likening the awakening of the
tree to the birth of the 1950s avant-garde move-
ment that culminated in the revolutionary youth
culture of the 1960s. He sees the final creation of
the glade of trees around Orpheus as analogous
to the reformed society that he thinks will emerge
from that movement. This interpretation is also
followed by Harry Martin in Understanding
Denise Levertov.
However, more recent criticism of the poem
sees it as a break with 1960s radicalism and a
move toward the religious themes of the author’s
later career. James Gallant, in his article in the
1997 volume of the journalRenascencedevoted
to Levertov, says ‘‘‘A Tree Telling of Orpheus’ is
perhaps the clearest expression of one of Lever-
tov’s most persistent themes, the spiritual jour-
ney through forests of doubt in search of deeper
faith.’’ In the opinion of Joan F. Hallisey, as
expressed in the 1982 issue ofMelus, the epiph-
anic sense of the poem—its character as a vision
of the divine manifest on earth—is derived from
the influence of Hasidic folklore.CRITICISMBradley A. Skeen
Skeen is a classics professor. In this essay, he
examines the mythological, religious, and philo-
sophical contexts of ‘‘A Tree Telling of Orpheus.’’
Levertov published ‘‘A Tree Telling of
Orpheus’’ in 1968 at the height of her involve-
ment with the youth culture of the 1960s, when
she was busy writing poems explicitly directed
against the Vietnam War, speaking at rallies,
attending sit-ins, and calling for revolution. It is
easy to read ‘‘A Tree Telling of Orpheus’’ within
the context of the time. The poet Robert Duncan,
Levertov’s friend, read it in precisely this way. He
saw the awakening of the tree to consciousness as
symbolic of the awakening to revolutionary con-
sciousness that lay at the heart of the counter-
cultural movement of that era. Levertov neverIllustration depicting the myth of Orpheus(ÓMary
Evans Picture Library / Alamy)
ATreeTellingofOrpheus