Denise Levertov (1923–1997)
Author of Selected Poems
About the Author
Born in Essex, England, Denise Levertov became a U.S. citizen after her marriage to Mitchell Goodman, the writer who was indicted, with Benjamin Spock and the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, for his antiwar activities. She came to New York to live in 1948. Levertov acknowledges that her writing was show more influenced by William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan. After her first book, The Double Image (1946), was published in England in 1946, she did not produce another volume until 1957, when City Lights brought out Here and Now. In 1961 she was poetry editor for the Nation, and in 1965 she received the grant in literature from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Her essays collected in The Poet in the World (1973) and Light Up the Cave are written with a penetrating intelligence. Winner of numerous awards and prizes, she is a poet of reverence and fierce moral drive. Denise Levertov died December 20, 1997. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Portriat of Denise Levertov taken by Elsa Dorfman on Flagg St, Cambridge, MA
Works by Denise Levertov
Penguin Modern Poets 9: Denise Levertov, Kenneth Rexroth, William Carlos Williams (1971) — Author — 63 copies
The Life Around Us: Selected Poems on Ecological Themes (New Directions Paperbook, 843) (1997) 50 copies, 1 review
Chekhov on the West Heath : [poem] 3 copies
5 Poems 2 copies
Embroideries 2 copies
Denise Levertov: In Her Own Province (Insights II: Working Papers in Contemporary Criticism) (1979) 2 copies
Levertov, Denise Archive 1 copy
Embracing the multipede 1 copy
Beyond the Field 1 copy
Antología poética: Edición bilingüe al cuidado de Cristina Gámez Fernández y Bernd Dietz (Poesía Hiperión)… (2013) 1 copy
The Outsider 4 & 5 1 copy
Daybreak 1 copy
Three poems 1 copy
Poems 1 copy
Blue Africa 1 copy
Window-Blind 1 copy
What Were They Like? {poem} 1 copy
1968 Peace Calendar & Appointment Book, The: Out of the War Shadow: An Anthology of Current Poetry 1 copy
Conversation in Moscow 1 copy
A tree telling of Orpheus 1 copy
Three Titles By Denise Levertov-Relearning the Alphabet, Breathing the Water, and To Stay Alive 1 copy
Summer Poems/1969 1 copy
Associated Works
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (2000) — Contributor — 1,308 copies, 9 reviews
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 952 copies, 7 reviews
A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry (1996) — Contributor — 850 copies, 12 reviews
Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature (1991) — Contributor — 407 copies, 5 reviews
Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women's Spirituality (2000) — Contributor — 376 copies, 2 reviews
Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (1993) — Contributor — 343 copies, 2 reviews
No More Masks: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Women Poets (1993) — Contributor, some editions — 217 copies, 3 reviews
Teaching with Fire: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Teach (2003) — Contributor — 205 copies, 1 review
Wise Women: Over Two Thousand Years of Spiritual Writing by Women (1996) — Contributor — 205 copies, 1 review
From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas 1900-2002 (2002) — Contributor — 174 copies
Poetry Speaks Expanded: Hear Poets Read Their Own Work from Tennyson to Plath (2007) — Contributor — 153 copies, 2 reviews
Writing Women's Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Narratives by Twentieth-Century American Women Writers (1994) — Contributor — 124 copies, 3 reviews
Leading From Within: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead (2007) — Contributor — 102 copies, 3 reviews
War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar and Peace Writing (2016) — Contributor — 93 copies, 1 review
The Poet's Work: 29 Poets on the Origins and Practice of Their Art (1979) — Contributor — 89 copies, 1 review
The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Concise Edition (2003) — Contributor — 68 copies, 1 review
She Rises Like the Sun: Invocations of the Goddess by Contemporary American Women Poets (1989) — Contributor — 68 copies
The Poets' Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales (2003) — Contributor — 67 copies, 1 review
Published and Perished: Memoria, Eulogies, and Remembrances of American Writers (2002) — Contributor — 40 copies, 1 review
Summer: A Spiritual Biography of the Season (2005) — Contributor; Contributor — 38 copies, 2 reviews
Where is Vietnam? American poets respond; an anthology of contemporary poems (1967) — Contributor, some editions — 33 copies
About Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Fiction, Poetry, and Essays (1973) — Contributor — 26 copies
Poetry in crystal; interpretations in crystal of thirty-one new poems by contemporary American poets (1963) — Contributor — 18 copies
Epitaphs for Lorine — Contributor — 6 copies
Peace or perish : a crisis anthology — Contributor — 4 copies
Poetry Magazine Vol. 109 No. 6, March 1967 — Contributor — 2 copies
In'hui, No.9 — Contributor — 1 copy
Truck 21, A 50th Birthday Celebration For Jonathan Williams — Contributor — 1 copy
Poetry East : number twenty & twenty-one fall 1986 : poetics — Contributor — 1 copy
Surviving visions : the art of Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki : an exhibition at the Massachusetts College of Art, March… — Contributor — 1 copy, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Levertov, Denise
- Legal name
- Levertov, Priscilla Denise
- Other names
- Goodman, Denise Levertov
Levertoff Goodman, Denise
Levertoff, Denise - Birthdate
- 1923-10-24
- Date of death
- 1997-12-20
- Burial location
- Lake View Cemetery, Seattle, Washington, USA
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- UK (birth)
USA (1955) - Birthplace
- Ilford, Essex, England, UK
- Place of death
- Seattle, Washington, USA
- Cause of death
- complications of Lymphoma
- Places of residence
- Ilford, Essex, England, UK
London, England, UK
New York, New York, USA
Somerville, Massachusetts, USA
Seattle, Washington, USA
Palo Alto, California, USA - Occupations
- nurse
poet
essayist
professor emeritus - Relationships
- Levertoff, Paul Philip (father)
Goodman, Mitchell (husband) - Organizations
- Stanford University
University of Washington - Awards and honors
- Shelley Memorial Award (1984)
Robert Frost Medal (1990)
Lannan Award (1993)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1962)
National Institute of Arts and Letters grant
Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (1995) (show all 10)
Lannan Literary Award (Poetry ∙ 1993)
American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award (Literature ∙ 1965)
Lenore Marshall prize (1976)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature ∙ 1980)
Members
Reviews
New and Selected Essays (New Directions Paperbook) by Denise Levertov
the poet's essays on various contemporary issue.
For the first time in paperback-Levertov's recent poetry, showing her at the height of her literary powers. Sands of the Well, first published in hardcover in 1996, shows the poet at the height of her considerable powers, as she addresses the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest coastal landscape in terms of music, memory, aging, doubt, and faith.
Wow. Incredible poems on doubt and faith.
I rejoice to have found a poet I enjoy as much as I do Mary Oliver.
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 78
- Also by
- 59
- Members
- 2,856
- Popularity
- #8,983
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 27
- ISBNs
- 91
- Languages
- 4
- Favorited
- 14