The Collected Poems Of Denise Levertov

The landmark collected work of one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, now in paperback.

Denise Levertov's Selected Poems delivers in a single accessible volume "one of the essential poets of our time" (Poetry Flash). Culled from two dozen poetry books, and drawing from six decades of her writing life, The Selected Poems of Denise Levertov offers a chronological overview of her great body of work. It is splendid and impressive to have at last a clear, unobstructed view of her ground-breaking poetry—the work of a poet who, as Kenneth Rexroth put it, "more than anyone, led the redirection of American poetry...to the mainstream of world literature." Described by Publishers Weekly as "at once as intimate as Creeley and as visionary as Duncan," Levertov was lauded as "one of the indispensable poets of our language, one of those few writers to whom it is necessary to pay attention" by The Malahat Review. No poet is more overdue for a single accessible volume; no career could be better to have within easy reach.

When Denise Levertov died on December 20, 1997, she left behind forty finished poems, which now form her last collection, This Great Unknowing.

The landmark collected work of one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, now in paperback. How splendid and impressive to have a complete, clear, and unobstructed view of Denise Levertov. Covering more than six decades and including, chronologically, every poem she ever published, Levertov’s Collected Poems presents her marvelous, groundbreaking work in full. Born in England, Denise Levertov emigrated in 1948 to the United States, where she was acclaimed by Kenneth Rexroth in The New York Times as “the most subtly skillful poet of her generation, the most profound, the most modest, the most moving.” A staunch anti-war activist and environmentalist, and the winner of the Robert Frost Medal, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Lannan Prize, Denise Levertov inspired generations of writers. New Directions is proud to publish this landmark collected poems of one of the twentieth century’s greatest poets.

Now available. Here are the early poems which first brought Denise Levertov's work to prominence -- from early uncollected poems, selections from The Double Image (London, 1946), and her three books Here and Now (1957), Overland to the Islands (1958) and With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (1960), which established her as one of the more lyrical and most influential poets of the New American poetry.

Gathered here in one handy volume are 62 poems about nature and the ecology. But, as the author notes in her preface, these are not all praise-poems"celebration and fear of loss are necessarily conjoined". This compact gift-book will have special appeal to those who love Mother Earth.

Over the years, Denise Levertov's poetry has moved ever more deeply into the realm of meditation, while yet speaking with the familiar voice of "the poet in the world." Oblique Prayers is arranged in four thematic sections that, taken together, work toward a mature philosophy in equal harmony with public activism and private reflection. A personal mood links the poems of “Decipherings.” In “Prisoners," the poet addresses the continuing horrors of our dark time: genocide, imperialism, impending nuclear holocaust––human degradation in brutal political guise. Levertov is an accomplished translator. With "Fourteen Poems by Jean Joubert," she introduces English-speaking readers to a contemporary French poet whose work is remarkably akin to her own. "Of God and of the Gods," the final section of the book, is informed by a transcendent lyricism that can equate in a breath "a day of spring, a needle's eye."

"The first full-length biography of British-born poet Denise Levertov (1923-1997) brings to life a major voice in American poetry during the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing on exhaustive archival research of Levertov's entire opus and on interviews with dozens of the poet's friends, Donna Krolik Hollenberg's authoritative biography captures the full complexity of Levertov's entire opus and on interviews with dozens of the poet's friends, Donna Korlik Hollenberg's authoritative biography captures the full complexity of Levertov as both a woman and an artist, and the dynamic world she inhabited"--Front jacket flap.