Denise Levertov (1923-1997)
Lisa Narbeshuber looks into the work of Denise Levertov in her article, “Relearning Denise Levertov’s Alphabet: War, Flesh, and the Intimacy of Otherness” in which she delves into Levertov’s Vietnam-era poetry and the way the poet’s cultural writing “shares a certain universality of flesh, and it can be used to locate oneself and to find the meaning of another in oneself” (131). She looks at Levetrov’s works including Relearning the Alphabet, To Stay Alive, and Footprintsand names the poet a world builder, focusing on her use of language, her slow “relearning” of the world around you by taking a path slightly off conventional poetry. Levertov, part of the Objectivists poetics which concentrates on the “here and now”, but she also focuses on identity problems and resists “hegemonic subject positions sanctioned by the centres of power” (132). Her writing from the 1960s and 1970s occurs in a politically controversial time of Vietnam War and all the strong opinions and worldviews that came with the time period, but she does not shout opposition, but rather quietly and acutely aware of her governments influence over the citizens and even herself, seeks to explore “‘dis-identification’ and the reconstruction of a more connected psyche” (132). Levertov has a “sense of worldliness . . . and a clear division between the public and the private . . .[and] her work patiently seeks a more embodied self and a more open, flexible vision of language” (132)
Narbeshuber believes that “Levertov’s poetry and poetics carefully rethink the nature of self and community, ambitiously attempting to mend the classic subject/object dualism, while simultaneously constructing a vision of a self able to think and act in the world” (133).
Levertov’s political-themed poetry was not widely received because during this time in history, poetry seemed to make an attempt at being “non-policital” and critics either ignored her protest poetry or dismissed it. In more recent years, critics have tried to highlight how Levertov concentrates on showing how words can shape meaning, but still, her poetry was highly criticized.
She “attempts to insert North American consciousness into the context of the Vietnam War” unlike the disconnectedness Americans felt from the news reporters on television reporting about the war, Levertov “combines material realities” and brings images near. Her poetry “captures both an innocent vision of childhood and a more ominous vision of the distraction and psychic disconnection constructed by technology, shopping, and a concentration only on the immediate cycles rather than on the political ecosystem” (134). In other words, she was criticized for writing war into her poetry, but was able to use consciousness to both connect and disconnect the reader to make a loud point, “to let the dreams of the oppressed speak” (135). She focuses “on the elemental nature of language or mapping out geopolitics [and] is always characterized by the centrality of intimacy and the fragility of the flesh” (135). Her writing seemed to depart slightly from conventional poetry with the way she explored the conscious and unconscious. In this way, she had similarities with the Black Mountain theory which aimed to get off the beaten path if you will. Her “relearning” and “discovery” of the world was gentle though, and she “wants to engage in a direct dialogue with the outside world rather than withdraw from such a worldly world into a removed aesthetic sphere” (138). Critics claim that Levertov slows down worldly objects, allowing readers to really feel something—even common somethings—in a new way, in a more awakened way. She does this using her language and awareness of conscious and unconscious. She “recurrently sets up the world stage, the local, and the personal; each section and its people, objects, and media, and so on informing the other” (140).
Where Narbeshuber mostly focuses on Levertov’s world building ideas and skills, she moves into how she uses the body and flesh throughout her poetry, even describing nature and the natural world as a body of flesh at times. She also explores the poet’s ability to highlight humanity’s separateness from a thing–a war–an issue by in a way bringing that dullness of the senses to the front of her poetry, reaching the reader both consciously and unconsciously. Narbeshuber writes, “Levertov recognizes the dulling of her senses and vision as monstrous; and the monster is not some separate thing that has invaded her being, and more than she is separate from the military assaults on Vietnam” (144). She wants the reader to experience “violent reality” and being the object in the reality and “the deeply personal self never dissolves into an alienating field of action or discourse . . .[and her] “cross-sections of the world–the flesh of nature, philosophical discourse, geopolitics, family relations–are always elements available to the senses of the poet herself…” as well as her readers (145).
I was very interested in Denise Levertov’s style and content which led me to want to research her a little more and dive a little deeper into her method of poetry. This article did a great job at explaining what I could not articulate about her poetry which is the way she taps into both big and small, making things that seems far and separate, somehow close and apart of the reader while allowing the reader to gain awareness of such feelings slowly. Her ability to make the world small and big, urges her readers to relearn something that seems automatic and familiar by going off the beaten path with her is remarkable to me. Her use of language sends readers down paths that are familiar, yet not, and hence opens reader’s minds to a whole new perspective without it even feeling that way in the slightest. Lisa Narbeshuber’s exploration of Levertrov helped me put my finger on what I felt while reading her poetry in a straightforward and understandable way.
Narbeshuber, Lisa. “Relearning Denise Levertov’s Alphabet: War, Flesh, and the Intimacy of Otherness.” Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue Canadienne d’Etudes Américaines, vol. 36, no. 2, 2006, pp. 131–48.
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