Denise Levertov Quotes

The world is not with us enough.

The poet never must lose despair.

When I am a woman — O, when I am
a woman,
my wells of salt brim and brim,
poems force the lock of my throat.

I’ve always hated artificial flowers unless they were just flagrantly and beautifully, sort of brassily, artificial. But the good imitations, the ones that you think are real until you get up to them, and then there’s that awful dead plastic, are really vile. And the reason why I think they’re so vile is because so much of the beauty of a flower is in its very perishableness. One doesn’t want it to last forever, and accumulate dust.

Ah, grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes in the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.

You think I don't know you've been living
under my porch.
You long for a real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.

all of us know he means we mustn't, any of us, lose touch with the source, pretend it's not there, cover over the mineshaft of passion

There comes a time when only anger is love.

There is a fence around the garden but the gate stands open.

He himself must be the key, now, to the next door, the next terrors of freedom and joy.

বিবাহের অবিরাম বেদনা
বিবাহের অবিরাম বেদনা:
উরু আর জিভ, হে প্রিয়,
এর সঙ্গে বেশ ভারি,
তা দাঁতে স্পন্দিত হয়

আমরা আংশিদারীর চেষ্টা করি
কিন্তু ফিরিয়ে দেয়া হয়, হে প্রিয়,
প্রত্যেকে আর প্রত্যেকে

এটা হল প্রকাণ্ড হাঙর আর আমরা
তার পেটের ভেতরে
আনন্দ খুঁজি, কোনও আনন্দ
যা এর বাইরে জানা যাবে না
দুই বনাম দুই এর সিন্দুকের
মধ্যে এর অবিরাম বেদনা ।

He told of journeys, of where sun and moon go while we stand in dark, of an earth-journey he dreamed he would take some day deeper than roots ... He told of the dreams of man, wars, passions, griefs, and I, a tree, understood words – ah, it seemed my thick bark would split like a sapling's that grew too fast in the spring when a late frost wounds it.

To me it seems perhaps Kropotkin understood half of what we need to know, and Lenin perhaps knew half, and true revolution … true revolution must put these two halves together?

Hugh Kenner, in a lecture, beautifully defined what poets seek if they really are poets) as “the power to make things as moving as the things they have been moved by.

pure dust that is all in all. Bless, weightless Spirit. Drink Caliban, push your tongue heavy into the calyx.

I am tired of 'the fine art of unhappiness'.