Selected Poems of Denise Levertov

Mary Oliver
Her work was, and is, a brave gift to us all.

Oyster Boy Review, Winter 2003/04
A fine introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century's most impassioned metaphysically, environmentally, and politically engaged poets.

Bloomsbury Review, March/April 2004
A blessing from the vast world of American poetry....Denise Levertov provided a sacred voice in each of her poems.

Book Description
Denise Levertov's Selected Poems delivers in a single accessible volume "one of the essential poets of our time" (Poetry Flash). Culled from two dozen poetry books, and drawing from six decades of her writing life, The Selected Poems of Denise Levertov offers a chronological overview of her great body of work. It is splendid and impressive to have at last a clear, unobstructed view of her ground-breaking poetry—the work of a poet who, as Kenneth Rexroth put it, "more than anyone, led the redirection of American poetry...to the mainstream of world literature." Described by Publishers Weekly as "at once as intimate as Creeley and as visionary as Duncan," Levertov was lauded as "one of the indispensable poets of our language, one of those few writers to whom it is necessary to pay attention" by The Malahat Review. No poet is more overdue for a single accessible volume; no career could be better to have within easy reach.

About the Author
Born in England and educated at home, as a child Denise Levertov (1923-1997) sent her poems to T.S. Eliot who admired and encouraged her. She emigrated to the United States in 1948 and became one of the most important American poets of the second half of the 20th century. She was a staunch anti-war activist and environmentalist, and winner of the Robert Frost Medal and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.


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Levertov is, in some ways, the anti-Plath: a bit older than Sylvia, she struggled through the same spiritual crises of the mid-20th century and emerged as a professional poet with a long and varied career. Such stability doesn't always help build a poet's reputation these days, of course. Today she may seem a bit old hat, with her Black Mountain, Native American and Catholic-leftist influences. Still, the writing is always skillful and the themes of personal and political sustenance of universal appeal. For a school's solid poetry collection, this volume of her selected poems covering her full six decades of work (she was born in 1923, and died in 1997) is well worth having. KLIATT Codes: SA-Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2002, New Directions, 220p. notes. index., Ages 15 to adult.


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