I've been reading Denise Levertov for around 30 years. That means by the time I started reading her she was in the last decade of a full, sometimes tempestuous, and increasingly fruitful yet not entirely fulfilled life; at least by her own over-hard personal standards and aspirations. Levertov died on December 19, 1997, almost exactly 20 years ago.
She was a poet, of course she was. But by that obvious observation I mean she had a deep sense of vocation to be a poet, a compelling sense of calling, an inner imperative, and with it a burden of responsibility to the world, and for the world's peace and flourishing. She was a poet and an activist, and mid-life the two fused into a poetry that addressed political and social issues from the perspectives of peace, justice and compassion for humanity. The Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, nuclear disarmament and nuclear deterrence, liberation theology and El Salvador, and the first Gulf War, together these events and movements provide a political chronology to be kept in mind in the reading of her poetry.
Alongside these is the personality and personal life of a woman whose background was rich in cultural resources: Jewish parents, Christianity of an Anglican flavour, English education, American immigrant, gifted in music, in younger years ambitious to excel in ballet dancing, and always, a reader who wrote and a writer who read widely, deeply and at times hungrily.
Her personal relations with family, lovers, friends, fellow poets and artists, publishers and correspondents were complex, at times volatile, ranging in intensity from lifelong faithfulness to serial fall outs and reconciliations. She was likeable and hard to get on with, demanding and generous, mercurial and compassionate, with a long memory both for kindnesses shown and for offences given.
Her poetry reflects all of this and it is the merit of this biography that her poetry is exploited as a primary hermeneutical lens through which to view her life. At the same time her life is both background and foreground in the overall appreciation and critical appropriation of her poetry.
There are different kinds of biography. This one is a careful chronological study of Levertov's poetry in the context of her life, and of her inner life as revealed in the poetry. The result is a sympathetic, critical but friendly account of a poet who combines passion for social justice, integrity that acknowledges vulnerability as its price, and an approach to life that is satisfied if she can ask the right questions, and dissatisfied with inadequate answers no longer listening to the big questions. Her poetry moves between interrogative mood and affirmative mood.
Her late poetry gives the sense of having climbed the hill, and now being about to crest the horizon for the reward of the view. For that reason it is the second half of this book that gave me most satisfaction. I've read around quite a lot of the secondary literature on Levertov, including the very fine biography by Dana Greene, published almost concurrently with this one. Both Greene and Hollenberg provide rich context and lucid narrative, as in their different approaches they explore the mind and poetry of Levertov the woman, the poet, the activist and late in life, the Christian. But Hollenberg's slowed down narrrative of Levertov's turn towards Catholicism, and her exposition of that journey in the light of her poetry, is a rich and telling lesson in the importance of allowing Levertov's own voice to be heard.
From Oblique Prayers published in 1984 till her last volume published during her lifetime, Sands of the Well, Hollenberg like a good counsellor allows Levertov to tell her story and to explain her own inner life, in her own terms and words, and from her own unique and by no means safely orthodox experiences. Only then, and into the silence of trust between poet and biographer, does Hollenberg comment and seek to discern and construct a coherent narrative. I remember first reading Breathing the Water, a collection published in 1987, and including her series of poems on Julian of Norwich. The Revelations of Divine Love is a text I know well, and in which at times in my own life I have dwelt for weeks of slow reading. Levertov's Julian poems are amongst the most revealing of Levertov's own spiritual search, and are clear windows into the heart of Julian's theology. She clearly respects Julian's intellect, her courage as a woman writer in a man's world, and her confidence and intimacy even in the face of the Almighty - Julian too was unafraid of the big questions, and impatient with answers not enough to the point.
Hollenberg traces Levertov's journey through her engagement with Julian, her study of art and music, her meditations on biblical texts, late in life influenced by a long nine month daily engagement with Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. As a poet Levertov was well practiced in imagining context, conversations, relationships and the inner lives of those she studied, imagined and tried to understand. Her spiritual exercises during the long nine month engagement with Ignatius and her spiritual director, reinforced that capacity for meditative thought and imaginative writing exercised in precision of expression and spiritual integrity. Her late poetry, like Beethoven's late quartets, sound such depths of human hope and fear, love and loss, and resilience in face of tragedy, that the reader is plunged into the deep waters of self-reflection and deepened awareness of what is at stake in the living of a good, worthwhile and durable human life.
Much, in fact most, of my reading is for the joy of it. But I'm a preacher, and what I read becomes part of the furniture of my mind, both food for thought and food to nourish others. I read poetry to learn how to use words. I read poetry to have my imagination strengthened by the regular work-outs prescribed by demanding trainers. But I also read poetry because I know of very few alternative ways towards that inner enabling to see the world from multiple human perspectives so different from my own. Levertov reminds me every time I read her, of what matters in life, and why.
It matters to me that I understand the world around me and that I should care about other people, other communities and other ways of being. War and violence, injustice whether economic, racist or religious, are too important to be left to the powerful, with no voices of dissent or reminders of accountability. And it matters that as a person of faith, a Christian who sees Jesus as the self-giving image of the love of God, I live a life that fulfils the outrageous claim of that hard to understand and therefore often misunderstood apostle Paul, that God has given to those who follow Jesus "the message of reconciliation" and a commission to be "ambassadors of Christ."
Denise Levertov moved in and out of faith for most of her life. But in that last decade she, in a deep and not to be sentimentalised sense, found her way home. Her late poetry is profoundly Christian, informed and inspired by the best texts, art and music, and often movingly, at times lyrically, expressed in the kind of poetry only she could have written. I'm deeply grateful to Hollenberg for a biography that does the usual things, but which also shows the patience of the good listener, and the love of the good interpreter.
The last sentence of this fine book is a cut gem of commendation: "Levertov's poetry enables us to see, to feel, to touch, to change, to grow. " I have found that to be true.
Donna Krolik Hollenberg, A Poet’s Revolution: The Life of Denise Levertov. (University of California Press, 2013).
Comments