Denise Levertov Quotes

I witnessed
all things quicken to color, to form
my question
not answered but given
its part
in a vast unfolding design lit
by a rising sun. ~ Denise Levertov

Nd as you read
the sea is turning its dark pages,
turning
its dark pages. ~ Denise Levertov

Looking, Walking, Being, I look and look. Looking's a way of being: one becomes, sometimes, a pair of eyes walking. Walking wherever looking takes one. The eyes dig and burrow into the world. They touch, fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor. World and the past of it, not only visible present, solid and shadow that looks at one looking. And language? Rhythms of echo and interruption? That's a way of breathing. breathing to sustain looking, walking and looking, through the world, in it. ~ Denise Levertov

I moonbathed diligently, as others sunbathe. ~ Denise Levertov

Do you mistake me?
I am speaking of living,
of moving from one moment into
the next, and into the
one after, breathing
death in the spring air ... ~ Denise Levertov

In city, in suburb, in forest, no way to stretch out the arms - so if you would grow, go straight up or deep down. ~ Denise Levertov

Yes, he is here in this
open field, in sunlight, among
the few young trees set out
to modify the bare facts
he's here, but only
because we are here.
When we go, he goes with us
to be your hands that never
do violence, your eyes
that wonder, your lives
that daily praise life
by living it, by laughter.
He is never alone here,
never cold in the field of graves. ~ Denise Levertov

We must breathe time as fishes breathe water. ~ Denise Levertov

Teachers at all levels encourage the idea that you have to talk about things in order to understand them, because they wouldn't have jobs, otherwise. But it's phony, you know. ~ Denise Levertov

Marvelous Truth, confront us at every turn, in every guise. ~ Denise Levertov

My pleasure
was in the strength of my back,
in my noble shoulders, the cool
smooth flesh cylinders of my arms. ~ Denise Levertov

You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night. ~ Denise Levertov

and nothing was burning, nothing but I, ~ Denise Levertov

I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence. ~ Francesca Lia Block

We have the words in our pockets,
obscure directions. The old ones
have taken away the light of their presence ... ~ Denise Levertov

In the dark I rest,
unready for the light which dawns
day after day,
eager to be shared.
Black silk, shelter me.
I need
more of the night before I open
eyes and heart
to illumination. I must still
grow in the dark like a root
not ready, not ready at all. ~ Denise Levertov

Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it. ~ Denise Levertov

Blue bead on the wick,
there's that in me that
burns and chills, blackening
my heart with its soot,
I think sometimes not Apollo heard me
but a different god. ~ Denise Levertov

The Broken Sandal"

Dreamed the thong of my sandal broke.
Nothing to hold it to my foot.
How shall I walk?
Barefoot?
The sharp stones, the dirt. I would
hobble.
And–
Where was I going?
Where was I going I can't
go to now, unless hurting?
Where am I standing, if I'm
to stand still now? ~ Denise Levertov

But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go. ~ Denise Levertov

The threat
of world's end is the old threat. ~ Denise Levertov

Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering. ~ Denise Levertov

There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am ... ~ Denise Levertov

In June the bush we call
alder was heavy, listless,
its leaves studded with galls,
growing wherever we didn't
want it. ~ Denise Levertov

And our dreams,
with what frivolity we have pared them
like toenails, clipped them like ends of
split hair. ~ Denise Levertov

I am, a shadow
that grows longer as the sun
moves, drawn out
on a thread of wonder.
If I bear burdens
they begin to be remembered
as gifts, goods, a basket
of bread that hurts
my shoulders but closes me
in fragrance. I can
eat as I go.
("Stepping Westward") ~ Denise Levertov

I believe every space and comma is a living part of the poem and has its function, just as every muscle and pore of the body has its function. And the way the lines are broken is a functioning part essential to the life of the poem. ~ Denise Levertov

Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak
of our own doubts, while dubiously
we mother man in his doubt! ~ Denise Levertov

The vast silence of Buddha overtakes
and overrules the oncoming roar
of tragic life that fills alleys and avenues;
it blocks the way of pedicabs, police, convoys. ~ Denise Levertov

It is fatal to one's artistic life to talk about something this is in process. ~ Denise Levertov

And on our lips the blood of berries before we kiss, ~ Denise Levertov

Each part
of speech a spark
awaiting redemption, each
a virtue, a power
in abeyance ... ~ Denise Levertov

At Delphi I prayed
to Apollo
that he maintain in me
the flame of the poem
and I drank of the brackish
spring there ... ~ Denise Levertov

What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn't
quicken his trotting
across the track into the palm brush.
What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do? ~ Denise Levertov

Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing their colored clothes; caps and bells. And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng's clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, 0 Lord, Creator, Hallowed one, You still, hour by hour sustain it. ~ Denise Levertov

Beespittle, droppings, hairs
of beefur: all become honey.
Virulent micro-organisms cannot
survive in honey. ~ Denise Levertov

Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August ... ~ Denise Levertov

You have come to the shore. There are no instructions. ~ Denise Levertov

Your secret was not the craftsman's delight in process,
which doesn't distinguish work from pleasure
your way was not to exalt nor avoid
the Adamic legacy, you simply made it irrelevant:
everything faded, thinned to nothing, beside
the light which bathed and warmed, the Presence
your being had opened to. Where it shone,
there life was, and abundantly; it touched
your dullest task, and the task was easy. ~ Denise Levertov

Don't eat
those nice green dollars your wife
gives you for breakfast. ~ Denise Levertov

Wear scarlet! Tear the green lemons
off the tree! I don't want
to forget who I am, what has burned in me,
and hang limp and clean, an empty dress - ~ Denise Levertov

The AvowalAs swimmers dareto lie face to the skyand water bears them,as hawks rest upon airand air sustains them;so would I learn to attain freefall, and floatinto Creator Spirit's deep embrace,knowing no effort earnsthat all-surrounding grace. ~ Denise Levertov

Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock. ~ Denise Levertov

Some people, no matter what you give them, still want the moon.
The bread, the salt, white meat and dark meat, still hungry.
The marriage bed and the cradle, still empty arms.
You give them land, their own earth under their feet, still they take to the roads.
And water: dig them the deepest, still it's not deep enough to drink the moon from. ~ Denise Levertov

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. ~ Denise Levertov

The stairway is not
a thing of gleaming strands
a radiant evanescence
for angels' feet that only glance in their tread, and need not
touch the stone. ~ Denise Levertov

Turn from that road's beguiling ease; return
to your hunger's turret. Enter, climb the stair
chill with disuse, where the croaking toad of time
regards from shimmering eyes your slow ascent
and the drip, drip, of darkness glimmers on the stone
to show you how your longing waits alone.
What alchemy shines from under that shut door,
spinning out gold from the hollow of the heart?
("The Sea's Wash In The Hollow Of The Heart") ~ Denise Levertov

The artist must create himself or be born again. ~ Denise Levertov

What I invaded has invaded me. ~ Denise Levertov

Trying to remember old dreams. A voice. Who came in.
And meanwhile the rain, all day, all evening,
quiet steady sound. Before it grew too dark
watched the blue iris leaning under the rain,
the flame of the poppies guttered and went out.
A voice. Almost recalled. There have been times
the gods entered. Entered a room, a cave?
A long enclosure where I was, the fourth wall of it
too distant or too dark to see. The birds are silent,
no moths at the lit windows. Only a swaying rosebush
pierces the table's reflection, raindrops gazing from it.
There have been hands laid on my shoulders.
What has been said to me,
how has my life replied?
The rain, the rain ... ~ Denise Levertov

Grey is the price
of neighboring with eagles, of knowing
a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen. ~ Denise Levertov

One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language. ~ Denise Levertov

If woman is inconstant, good, I am faithful to ebb and flow, I fall in season and now is a time of ripening. ~ Denise Levertov

Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney's shadow. ~ Denise Levertov

Just when you seem to yourself nothing but a flimsy web of questions, you are given the questions of others to hold in the emptiness of your hands, songbird eggs that can still hatch if you keep them warm, butterflies opening and closing themselves in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure their scintillant fur, their dust. You are given the questions of others as if they were answers to all you ask. Yes, perhaps this gift is your answer. ~ Denise Levertov

Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the invisible shared out in endless abundance. ~ Denise Levertov

Both art and faith are dependent on imagination; both are ventures into the unknown. ~ Denise Levertov

Death and pain dominate this world, for though many are cured, they leave still weak, still tremulous, still knowing mortality has whispered to them; have seen in the folding of white bedspreads according to rule the starched pleats of a shroud. ~ Denise Levertov

In certain ways writing is a form of prayer. ~ Denise Levertov

The yellow moon dreamily
tipping buttons of light
down among the leaves. Marimba,
marimba - from beyond the
black street.
Somebody dancing,
somebody
getting the hell
outta here. Shadows of cats
weave round the treetrunks,
the exposed knotty roots.
("Scenes from the Life of the Peppertrees") ~ Denise Levertov

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. ~ Denise Levertov

Through the hollow globe, a ring
of frayed rusty scrapiron,
is it the sea that shines?
Is it a road at the world's edge? ~ Denise Levertov

We are so many
and many within themselves
travel to far islands but no one
asks for their story ... ~ Denise Levertov

Prophetic utterance, like poetic utterance, transforms experience and moves the receiver to new attitudes. The kinds of experience
the recognitions or revelations
out of which both prophecy and poetry emerge, are such as to stir the prophet or poet to speech that may exceed their own known capacities; they are "inspired," they breathe in revelation and breathe out new words; and by so doing they transfer over to the listener or reader a parallel experience, a parallel intensity, which impels that person into new attitudes and new actions. ~ Denise Levertov

But we have only begun to love the earth. We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life. How could we tire of hope?-so much is in bud. ~ Denise Levertov

The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer. ~ Denise Levertov

Love is a landscape the long mountains
define but don't
shut off from the
unseeable distance. ~ Denise Levertov

The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion ... elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant. ~ Denise Levertov

An awe so quiet I don't know when it began.
A gratitude had begun to sing in me.
Was there some moment dividing song from no song?
When does dewfall begin?
When does night fold its arms over our hearts to cherish them?
When is daybreak? ~ Denise Levertov

Images
split the truth
in fractions. ~ Denise Levertov

Among a hundred windows shining
dully in the vast side
of greater-than-palace number such-and-such
one burns
these several years, each night
as if the room within were aflame. ~ Denise Levertov

Night is
breathing
close to us,
dark, soft. ~ Denise Levertov

We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too. ~ Denise Levertov

I thought I was growing wings
it was a cocoon.
I thought, now is the time to step
into the fire
it was deep water.
Eschatology is a word I learned
as a child: the study of Last Things;
facing my mirror - no longer young,
the news - always of death,
the dogs - rising from sleep and clamoring
and howling, howling ...
("Seeing For a Moment") ~ Denise Levertov

We need a new direction, and we need it soon. Instead of death by food pyramid, we can have life by educated freedom - a freedom in which we're released from the rules of the federal government, the dogma of the fad diet du jour, the smooth words of a health guru, the marionetting of powerful industries, the misinterpretation of science, and the mass confusion that keeps us incapacitated. As we demolish the walls of the pyramids, plates, and other shapes that ultimately lock us inside a dietary dictatorship, we're left with a horizon-wide landscape to explore - and with it, the opportunity to pursue what works for us and guiltlessly leave behind what doesn't. But there's just one catch. In order to reach that point of liberation, we can't keep doing what we've been doing - or else we'll keep getting what we've been getting. ~ Denise Minger

That was something, wasn't it? Trust was a good place to start. Especially after the kind of betrayal she'd been through. It made him want to prove he was the kind of man she deserved. The kind of man who'd love her for better or worse. The kind who was faithful and true. ~ Denise Hunter

Of all the cars I've owned, I'd like still to have the Ferrari, the Porsche, the Alfa, the Lancia, the MG-TCs and the Fiat 850, but mostly I miss my Mini Moke. ~ Denise McCluggage

Get some ice on that." "I will." She turned toward the house, steady enough. "You get nauseated or have blurry vision, tell Greta." Abigail started to nod, then checked the motion. He hoped she wouldn't overdo it. He'd known one too many cowboys to take a fall, keep working, then keel over later. "Lie down and take it easy," Wade called. "Yes, Dad," Abigail said saucily. Wade clamped his lips together. Last thing he wanted was Abigail thinking fatherly thoughts of him. Heaven knew, his own weren't going that direction. ~ Denise Hunter

My husband is my part of my greatest joys, so it doesn't feel like work or like I'm balancing anything. My husband and my kids absolutely come first, so work is just something where I figure out where it will fit. ~ Monica Denise Brown

Clutter-clearing is modern-day alchemy. ~ Denise Linn

We sit in silence for several minutes, and I listen to the sound of his breathing, surprised how something so simple can fill me with contentment. ~ Denise Grover Swank

People are very frightened in publishing at the moment. Nobody knows what sells. More so now because the market's changing so fundamentally because of Kindle and electronic publishing. It's a fundamental shift in the way stories are put out into the world. ~ Denise Mina

What the hell is wrong with me? This isn't the first time I've asked myself this question, in a multitude of situations. But this time specifically I'm referring to my inability to feel anything when being kissed by a man. Maybe I'm just too broken. Thant's the part that scares me the most. That I'm too broken to love. ~ Denise Grover Swank

Visual media is the dominant art form in our present day culture, whereas poetry is, at best, a proxy. Yet poetry and film are both "dream factories." ~ Denise Duhamel

While poetry was less professionalized than it is now, I still had this urge to win prizes and see my work in magazines, to get an "A," as though poetry could be graded. I wish I had been more patient and less frantic about getting published. ~ Denise Duhamel

She'd stared at the darkened ceiling half the night wondering about what Murphy had said. Turning the comment every which way. And every way she turned it, she ended up with the same view: Murphy had feelings for her. She couldn't believe he might love her - though his answer to Dad's question suggested otherwise. And she definitely wasn't about to address the subject with him. Last night had been awkward enough. ~ Denise Hunter

My image is me. I talk for myself. I didn't become this person others wanted me to be. ~ Monica Denise Brown

Because right now, leaning against Kenny's counter, he was fully, painfully erect, for maybe the first time in months.

He backed away and tried to think about something else - anything else. Losing his job, his mother's cat, Denise - oh, there you go. Limp as a politician's moral code. ~ Amy Lane

Founders Day tradition dictated a peck on the cheek, but Travis had never been a follower. He lowered his head and took advantage of her surprise. Her lips were soft as a rose petal and just as pliable. He'd meant it to be a quick, comforting brushing of lips, but then she responded. Just the faintest movement. The yielding lit a fire in his belly that wouldn't be extinguished anytime soon. He went back for seconds. I've missed you so much. He took her face in his hands, wanted to thread his fingers through that long thick hair and pull her closer. But then two palms planted into his chest and pushed hard. Her eyes spat sparks. She dragged the back of her hand across her lips as if wiping the kiss away. Won't be as easy as that, darlin'. ~ Denise Hunter

You greedy schmuck!" Denise burst out.
Ian cast a leisurely glance in her direction. "And now my feelings are hurt. That'll cost you the boat, too. ~ Jeaniene Frost

I stand outside the doorway of my Western civilization class caught in a dilemma. Either go in and have thirty pairs of eyes stare at me, or leave - which means missing my test. The decision is already made. I only need to open the door and walk in. ~ Denise Grover Swank

She isn't mine ... She is ultimately God's, and I'm simply a steward of her heart for a season. ~ Denise Hildreth Jones

Charlie Sheen is who again? Denise is engaged? ~ Neil Patrick Harris

For some students, school is the only place where they get a hot meal and a warm hug. Teachers are sometimes the only ones who tell our children they can go from an Indian reservation to the Ivy League, from the home of a struggling single mom to the White House. ~ Denise Juneau

Like a typical Gemini I'm changeable, I can be two different types of people. I can be very outgoing, but sometimes very shy. ~ Denise Van Outen

I have only known you about five months. But you know every piece of my life, all the ugly details. Now I'm asking you to trust me with yours - not because I want to know your stuff, but because I want to know you. What made you this amazing woman that you are, this woman that I've grown to admire and love. I want to know her story. ~ Denise Hildreth Jones

What the heck. He'd gone this far, might as well go for broke. He slid his fingers along the curve of her cheek, relishing the softness of her skin.

"I haven't felt so happy in... I can't even remember ~ Denise Hunter

I glared at him. "What I do or don't do is my business. If I wanted the world to know, I would have tweeted about it. ~ Denise Grover Swank

Life is a gift, however long it lasts. It's God's to give and take away as He sees fit. We go through life thinking we're entitled to our ninety, but we're not entitled to anything. All we can do is trust that He knows what He's doing. That He has a plan for all of us, and that no pain He allows in our life will go unused. ~ Denise Hunter

Now, everybody knows the basic erogenous zones. You got one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven ... OK, now most guys will hit one, two, three and then go to seven and set up camp ... You want to hit 'em all and you wanna mix 'em up. You gotta keep 'em on their toes ... You could start out with a little one. A two. A one, two, three. A three. A five. A four. A three, two. Two. A two, four, six. Two, four, six. Four. Two. Two. Four, seven! Five, seven! Six, seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! [holds up seven fingers] ~ Monica Denise Brown