Kalliope means "beautiful voice" from Greek καλλος (kallos) "beauty" and οψ (ops) "voice". In Greek mythology she was a goddess of epic poetry and eloquence, one of the nine Muses. Join us every Tuesday afternoon at the Daily Kos community political poetry club.
Your own poetry is always welcome in the comments.
Bongos, berets & turtle neck sweaters optional.
The keyboard is mightier than the sword.
Reading the poetry of Denise Levertov (1923–1997) is not going to make your life easier. She’s a demanding poet, as unsparing of her readers as she is of herself.
Her field of view is broad. Her work ranges from scathingly anti-war and feminist polemics through exquisite studies of the natural world, moments in “everyday” life captured by her unique vision, and a questing spirituality that delved deep into life’s mysteries. Almost anything that crossed her path came under her pen.
In 1966, at a conference on Title VII and the EEOC, ironically entitled “Targets for Action,” a handful of attendees were frustrated and angry at being told the conference delegates had no authority to pass a resolution demanding the EEOC carry out its legal mandate to end sex discrimination in employment. They decided to meet privately to discuss alternatives.
Delegates at EEOC Conference (Betty Friedan on far right) — June, 1966
The “Second Wave” of Feminism in America had been building for several years, but when Betty Friedan wrote N.O.W. on a paper napkin during the meeting, that wave became focused.
Against this background, Denise Levertov soon issued her own call to arms, using “vulgar” language to jar women readers out of any genteel deference to which they might be clinging — an issue she was struggling with in her own marriage:
Hypocrite Women
.
Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak
of our own doubts, while dubiously
we mother man in his doubt!
.
And if at Mill Valley perched in the trees
the sweet rain drifting through western air
a white sweating bull of a poet told us
.
our cunts are ugly—why didn't we
admit we have thought so too? (And
what shame? They are not for the eye!)
.
No, they are dark and wrinkled and hairy,
caves of the Moon ... And when a
dark humming fills us, a
.
coldness towards life,
we are too much women to
own to such unwomanliness.
.
Whorishly with the psychopomp
we play and plead—and say
nothing of this later. And our dreams,
.
with what frivolity we have pared them
like toenails, clipped them like ends of
split hair.
The “white sweating bull of a poet” was Jack Spicer. He read his poem “For Joe” at a large reception, held after Levertov’s well-received poetry reading at the Poetry Center on her first trip to California in 1958. Although the poem was directed at Spicer’s straight friend Joe Dunn, the misogyny it expresses is hard to miss. This greatly embarrassed host Robert Duncan, insulted Levertov, and strained an otherwise cordial evening.
For Joe
By Jack Spicer
People who don’t like the smell of faggot vomit
Will never understand why men don’t like women
Won’t see why those never to be forgotten thighs
Of Helen (say) will move us to screams of laughter
Parody (what we don’t want) is the whole thing.
Don’t deliver us any mail today, mailman.
Send us no letters. The female genital organ is hideous. We
Do not want to be moved.
Forgive us. Give us
A single example of the fact that nature is imperfect.
Men ought to love men
(And do)
As the man said
Its
Rosemary for remembrance.
.
Levertov — 1959
There were several “schools” of poetry in America in the late 1950s and early 60s, but they did have something in common — domination by men.
Denise Levertov was one of the poets whose work announced to men that a new wave of women were emerging from the supportive secondary roles imposed on them by post-WWII society.
Early Years
She was born in Ilford, nine miles northeast of Charing Cross. Her mother was Welsh, but her father was a Russian Hassidic Jew who had converted to Christianity. He emigrated to the UK, where he became an Anglican pastor, but was also a prolific writer in Hebrew, Russian, German, and English.
"My father's Hassidic ancestry, his being steeped in Jewish and Christian scholarship and mysticism, his fervour and eloquence as a preacher, were factors built into my cells." Levertov was home-schooled by her parents. She showed an enthusiasm for writing from an early age.
At 12, she sent some of her poems to T.S. Eliot, who replied with a two-page letter of encouragement. She was 17 when her first poem was published.
The political activism that was such a major part of her life and writing started in childhood: "Humanitarian politics came early into my life: seeing my father on a soapbox protesting Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia; my father and sister both on soap-boxes protesting Britain's lack of support for Spain; my mother canvasing long before those events for the League of Nations Union; and all three of them working on behalf of the German and Austrian refugees from 1933 onwards… I used to sell the Daily Worker house-to-house in the working class streets of Ilford Lane".
During the Blitz, she served as a civilian nurse. Her first book of poetry, The Double Image, appeared in 1946.
America
In 1947, she married American writer Mitchell Goodman, and came with him to New York in 1948. Their son Nickolai was born in 1949. Levertov became a naturalised American citizen in 1955.
The “New Romantic”
She had been hailed as a “New Romantic” poet in Britain. In America, Levertov initially became involved with the “Black Mountain” poets, which included Robert Creeley and William Carlos Williams. Her first American book of poetry, Here and Now, showed the effect the “American” idiom was beginning to have on her work, but she never stayed tidily inside any group’s boundaries for very long.
She was poetry editor of The Nation in 1961-62, where she fostered the work of feminist and other leftist activist poets. Levertov also served as poetry editor for Mother Jones from 1976-78. She taught her craft at several colleges and universities, and authored a number of collections of essays and criticism, including The Poet in the World,Light up the Cave, and New & Selected Essays.
In the 1960s and 70s, Levertov and her husband spent much of their time writing, organizing , and participating in anti-war protests. In July, 1968, Mitch Goodman was one of the “Boston Five,” which also included Benjamin Spock and Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, who were all sentenced to federal prison for counseling young men to refuse military service.
With Muriel Rukeyser and other poets, Levertov founded the Writers and Artists Protest against the War in Vietnam. She joined the War Resisters League, and was a founding member with such luminaries as Noam Chomsky and Dwight MacDonald of RESIST. Levertov was jailed several times for civil disobedience during anti-war demonstrations at Berkeley and other hot spots.
At the Justice Department November 15, 1969
.
Brown gas-fog, white
beneath the street lamps.
Cut off on three sides, all space filled
with our bodies.
Bodies that stumble
in brown airlessness, whitened
in light, a mildew glare,
that stumble
hand in hand, blinded, retching.
Wanting it, wanting
to be here, the body believing it’s
dying in its nausea, my head
clear in its despair, a kind of joy,
knowing this is by no means death,
is trivial, an incident, a
fragile instant. Wanting it, wanting
with all my hunger this anguish,
this knowing in the body
the grim odds we’re
up against, wanting it real.
Up that bank where gas
curled in the ivy, dragging each other
up, strangers, brothers
and sisters. Nothing
will do but
to taste the bitter
taste. No life
other, apart from.
.
As the years passed, she spoke out against nuclear weaponry, American aid to El Salvador, and the Persian Gulf War. In books like The Sorrow Dance,Relearning the Alphabet, and To Stay Alive, she addressed many social and political themes, including the Detroit riots, nuclear disarmament and ecology.
Goodbye to Tolerance
.
Genial poets, pink-faced
earnest wits—
you have given the world
some choice morsels,
gobbets of language presented
as one presents T-bone steak
and Cherries Jubilee.
Goodbye, goodbye,
I don’t care
if I never taste your fine food again,
neutral fellows, seers of every side.
Tolerance, what crimes
are committed in your name.
.
And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,
blood donors. Your crumbs
choke me, I would not want
a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped
by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never
falter: irresponsive
to nightmare reality.
.
It is my brothers, my sisters,
whose blood spurts out and stops
forever
because you choose to believe it is not your business.
.
Goodbye, goodbye,
your poems
shut their little mouths,
your loaves grow moldy,
a gulf has split
the ground between us,
and you won’t wave, you’re looking
another way.
We shan’t meet again—
unless you leap it, leaving
behind you the cherished
worms of your dispassion,
your pallid ironies,
your jovial, murderous,
wry-humored balanced judgment,
leap over, un-
balanced? ... then
how our fanatic tears
would flow and mingle
for joy ...
.
Transition
By 1975, her successes had far outstripped those of her husband, which contributed to the end of their marriage.
Wedding-Ring
.
My wedding-ring lies in a basket
as if at the bottom of a well.
Nothing will come to fish it back up
and onto my finger again.
It lies
among keys to abandoned houses,
nails waiting to be needed and hammered
into some wall,
telephone numbers with no names attached,
idle paperclips.
It can’t be given away
for fear of bringing ill-luck
It can’t be sold
for the marriage was good in its own
time, though that time is gone.
Could some artificer
beat into it bright stones, transform it
into a dazzling circlet no one could take
for solemn betrothal or to make promises
living will not let them keep? Change it
into a simple gift I could give in friendship?
.
1983 — detail of portrait by David Geier
Much of her later years were spent teaching. She lived in Massachusetts and taught at MIT, Brandeis University, and Tufts University, but later returned to the West Coast, settling in Seattle, while shuttling back and forth to Palo Alto to teach at Stanford University. There she befriended Robert McAfee Brown, a pastor and professor of religion at Stanford. Franciscan Murray Bodo also became a spiritual advisor to her.
More and more of her late work was devoted to spiritual and religious exploration, but she still wrote political poetry, including this piece which contrasts the oblivious joy of Holiday merry-makers with the shifting falsehoods surrounding the Gulf War:
In California During The Gulf War
.
Among the blight-killed eucalypts, among
trees and bushes rusted by Christmas frosts,
the yards and hillsides exhausted by five years of drought,
.
certain airy white blossoms punctually
reappeared, and dense clusters of pale pink, dark pink—
a delicate abundance. They seemed
.
like guests arriving joyfully on the accustomed
festival day, unaware of the year's events, not perceiving
the sackcloth others were wearing.
. To some of us, the dejected landscape consorted well
with our shame and bitterness. Skies ever-blue,
daily sunshine, disgusted us like smile-buttons.
. Yet the blossoms, clinging to thin branches
more lightly than birds alert for flight,
lifted the sunken heart
. even against its will.
But not
as symbols of hope: they were flimsy
as our resistance to the crimes committed
.
--again, again--in our name; and yes, they return,
year after year, and yes, they briefly shone with serene joy
over against the dark glare
.
of evil days. They are, and their presence
is quietness ineffable--and the bombings are, were,
no doubt will be; that quiet, that huge cacophany
. simultaneous. No promise was being accorded, the blossoms
were not doves, there was no rainbow. And when it was claimed
the war had ended, it had not ended.
.
The Last Page
After retiring from teaching, she continued to delve into the spiritual, re-examining her religious beliefs. She joined the Catholic Church at St. Edwards, Seattle, in 1990. She also joined protests of the U.S. attack on Iraq.
But in 1994 she was diagnosed with lymphoma, and suffered pneumonia and acute laryngitis. However, she continued to lecture and participate at national conferences. In February, 1997, she was saddened by the death of Mitch Goodman.
In December, 1997, Denise Levertov died at age 74.
She left behind a looseleaf notebook with 40 poems. It is rare to have such a clear record of someone’s last weeks of life. Denise Levertov kept her eloquent voice to the very end.
