Denise Levertov in Company

Description

A reflection on this poet's legacy through essays by contemporary poets and literary critics

Denise Levertov (1923-1997) was an award-winning author of more than thirty books of poetry and prose featuring the subjects of politics and war and, in later years, religion. Born and raised in England amid political unrest and war, Levertov moved to the United States after World War II and settled in as a passionate poet/activist for peace and environmental conservation. She initially gained recognition as a member of the Black Mountain poets and later as a highly respected mentor and educator at esteemed universities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brandeis, and Stanford, where she helped shape future generations of poets. In Denise Levertov in Company, Donna Krolik Hollenberg has assembled ten essays by contemporary poets who were influenced by Levertov as former students and/or colleagues and another ten by literary critics.

Hollenberg selected contributors on the basis of their spiritual, intellectual, and political connections with Levertov at different stages of her life in the United States, and all are distinguished in their own right. The first five poets became acquainted with Levertov in the 1960s and 1970s, when she and they protested against the war in Vietnam. The next five poets, who were close to Levertov in the 1980s and 1990s while she was at Stanford, respond to aspects of Levertov's religious quest and her love and concern for the natural world.

To assess Levertov's influence on contemporary poetry, Hollenberg has organized the essays into pairs. First a contributor offers a personal essay about his or her relationship with Levertov, which is followed by a companion essay about the contributor's poetry in relation to Levertov's. What emerges is a dialogue between autobiographical testimony and critical analysis. This combination of personal witness and objective evaluation
contributes to a greater understanding of the contemporary poetry scene and the influence of Levertov's distinguished and affecting legacy.

Contributors:
Rae Armantrout
Eavan Boland
Martha Collins
Alison Hawthorne Deming
Susan Eisenberg
Reginald Gibbons
Donna Krolik Hollenberg
Romana Huk
Paul Lacey
Aldon Lynn Nielsen
Kathleen Norris
Mark Pawlak
Peggy Rosenthal
Ben Sáenz
Peter Dale Scott
David Shaddock
Michael Thurston
Emily Warn
Bruce Weigl
Al Young

Sujets

• Women Authors
• Literary Criticism
• Otra mujer
• Alison Hawthorne Deming
• Rachel Blau DuPlessis
• Another Woman
• Jorie Graham
• Muriel Rukeyser
• Denise Levertov
• Rae Armantrout
• Lyn Hejinian
• Memoir
• Poetry
• Jane Wilde
• May Sarton
• Anne Bradstreet
• Adrienne Rich
• Anne Sexton
• Marthe
• Mircea Eliade
• Sylvia Plath
• Mary Shelley

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 30 juin 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781611178739
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

DENISE LEVERTOV IN COMPANY
DENISE LEVERTOV IN COMPANY
Essays by Her Students, Colleagues, and Fellow Writers
Edited by
Donna Krolik Hollenberg

The University of South Carolina Press
2018 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/ .
ISBN 978-1-61117-872-2 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-61117-873-9 (ebook)
Front cover image: Chris Felver
www.chrisfelver.com
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
WORDSMITHS IN THE IDEA FACTORY
Denise Levertov s MIT Poetry Workshop
Mark Pawlak
WORKING POETS
Denise Levertov and Mark Pawlak
Paul Lacey
THE SUDDEN ANGEL AFFRIGHTED ME
God Wrestling in Denise Levertov s Life and Art
David Shaddock
ENGAGEMENT, INQUIRY, FAITH
The Parallel Voyages of Denise Levertov and David Shaddock
Peter Dale Scott
DENISE AND ME
Rae Armantrout
NOTHING / LIKE A REAL BRIDGE
Rae Armantrout and Denise Levertov
Romana Huk
INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE WEIGL
Donna K. Hollenberg
GENERATIONS OF POETS
Denise Levertov and Bruce Weigl
Reginald Gibbons
POET S EAR, POET S VOICE
Susan Eisenberg
THE EXPANSIVE VIEW
The Poetry of Susan Eisenberg and Denise Levertov
Martha Collins
THE INTEGRITY OF WORDS
Kathleen Norris
FROM DENISE LEVERTOV TO KATHLEEN NORRIS
Peggy Rosenthal
DEAR, DEAR DENISE
Fragments of a Mentor
Ben S enz
DEAR BEN, DEAR DENISE
A Lament and a Praise
Alison Hawthorne Deming
DEAR DENISE
Al Young
P.S. MIND THE GAP
Aldon Lynn Nielsen
THE ALMOST WILDERNESS
Emily Warn
PRIMARY WONDERS, PRIMARY JOYS
Emily Warn and Denise Levertov
Donna K. Hollenberg
DENISE LEVERTOV
Craft and Conscience
Eavan Boland
ENDING IN ABANDON
Eavan Boland and Denise Levertov
Michael Thurston
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I d like to thank all of the contributors for the energy and effort they put into their essays, as well as, in some cases, permission to quote from their poems. I d also like to thank Jim Denton and Linda Haines Fogle at the University of South Carolina Press for their support. Special thanks, also, to my husband, Leonard M. Rubin, for his helpful technical advice.
Permission to quote from unpublished material is granted by the Denise Levertov Trust, Paul A. Lacy and Valerie Trueblood Rapport, Co-Trustees.
Grateful acknowledgment is given to the following people and institutions for permission to quote from published sources:
New Directions Publishing Corporation for permission to quote from Collected Poems of Denise Levertov , 2013 by Denise Levertov and the Estate of Denise Levertov, Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Emily Warn, Beyond (Part II) from The Novice Insomniac . 1996 by Emily Warn. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org . Benjamin Alire S enz, excerpt from The Ninth Dream: War (in the City in Which I Live), from Dreaming the End of War . 2006 by Benjamin Alire S enz. Reprinted with the permission of The Permission Company, Inc. on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org .
Bruce Weigl, One Lie and Quiet Fountain, from The Abundance of Nothing . 2012 by Bruce Weigl. Published 2012 by Northwestern University Psress. All rights reserved.
Ascension and excerpts from Land of the Living and Housekeeping from Little Girls in Church , by Kathleen Norris, 1995. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Excerpt from Body and Blood from Journey: New and Selected Poems, 1969-1999 , by Kathleen Norris, 2001. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Excerpt from Urn Burial from Money Shot , by Rae Armantrout 2011. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Excerpts from Getting Warm and from View, both from Veil: New and Selected Poems , by Rae Armantrout 2001. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Endings. 1982 by Eavan Boland, The Journey. Copyright 1987 by Eavan Boland, from Outside History: Selected Poems 1980-1990 by Eavan Boland. Used by permission of W.W. Norton and Co. and by Caracanet Press in the United Kingdom.
INTRODUCTION
Anglo-American poet Denise Levertov (1923-1997) was the author of more than thirty books of poetry, prose, and translations and is acknowledged as an important figure in the literary and social history of the second half of the twentieth century. She grew up in England during a period of increasing fascism and approaching war, the youngest daughter in a family that was actively involved in rescuing Jewish refugees from Adolf Hitler s Germany. Her father, Paul Levertoff, was an Anglican priest who converted from Judaism; her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, a pious Welsh schoolteacher. A precocious child, Levertov began to publish poems as a teenager, and by 1946, when her first book appeared, she was noted as a promising British neo-Romantic poet. She moved to the United States after World War II and soon gained further recognition as a member of the Black Mountain school of poets, practitioners of poetry in open forms influenced by American modernists Ezra Pound, H.D., and William Carlos Williams. The poetry and presence of Williams became crucial in this regard, as did the support of such contemporaries as Cid Corman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jonathan Williams, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan, poets who were her first publishers and critics.
Levertov s friendships with Creeley and Duncan were particularly important. In her transition from England to the United States, Creeley helped her to adjust to the differences in usage and stress in American speech, and, through him Levertov learned about Charles Olson s concept of composition by field, although her tie with Olson was weaker than that with Creeley. As her correspondence with Duncan shows, Levertov s close friendship with him, already complicated because of religious and political differences, was irreparably damaged over the Vietnam War and their different views of the role of the poet in politics. Levertov also benefited from the moral support of women friends who, though less recognized by the literary world, were equally committed to creative vocations, including art, ballet, and photography, as well as writing. Perhaps the most important of these was Muriel Rukeyser, who was like an older sister to Levertov.
In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Levertov participated passionately as a poet/activist in the peace movement, the antinuclear movement, and the environmentalist movement and in controversies surrounding poetry and politics, even as she taught at several American universities, mostly on the East and West Coasts. In her later years, a journey toward Christian faith, inspired by liberation theology, culminated in her conversion to Roman Catholicism. In this period her poetry was reanimated by religious fervor.
Levertov s work is included in all the major anthologies of twentieth-century poetry. A recent bibliography lists two pages of books or dissertations entirely or partially devoted to her work, and there are two earlier book-length bibliographies of primary and secondary sources. Since her death book-length editions of her letters have appeared, testifying further to her importance in literary history. Her correspondence with William Carlos Williams, edited by Christopher MacGowan, was published by New Directions (1998), and her correspondence with Robert Duncan, edited by Albert Gelpi and Robert Bertholf, was published by Stanford University Press (2004). It is worth noting, as a related primary source, that Vine of David Press recently published Paul Levertoff s Love and the Messianic Age (2009) as part of their Messianic Luminaries Series. Most recently Dana Greene s biography, Denise Levertov: A Poet s Life , was published by the University of Illinois Press (2012), and my biography, A Poet s Revolution: The Life of Denise Levertov , was published by the University of California Press (2013). New Directions published Levertov s Collected Poems in 2013.
In the course of researching my biography of Levertov, I became aware of the many distinguished younger poets whose lives and work she touched as a teacher, mentor, and friend. Yet, although there are scattered tributes and letters, this is the first book to gather and assesses that influence. Denise Levertov in Company demonstrates Levertov s impact upon contemporary poetry by including twenty essays, ten by a selection of these poets and ten by other poets and critics, who have written companion essays about the work of each contributor in relation to Levertov s poetry. A dialogue is thus implicit in the structure of the book between two perspectives: first, autobiographical testimony by the selected poets, and second, critical analysis, written by others in a spirit of affiliation with them. I chose the contributors on the basis of their spiritual, intellectual, and political connections with Levertov at different stages of her life in the United States as well as on the basis of their individual distinction. The pairs of essays are organized chronologically. A common motif in many of the companion essays, with one notable exception, is the ways in which Levertov enabled her students to find his or her own voice.
The first five p