Political protest, intimate observation and later Christian reflection mark the changing phases of Denise Levertov’s poetry. The Sorrow Dance and Relearning the Alphabet show her attention to everyday objects, relationships and open forms, while poems from the Vietnam War era confront violence and public responsibility. Later collections such as Breathing the Water and The Stream & the Sapphire engage Christian faith, incarnation and prayer without abandoning the sensory detail of her earlier work. Levertov’s lines are flexible, musical and shaped by the breath rather than strict metre, reflecting her ideas about organic form. The strongest neighbouring categories are twentieth-century poetry, political poetry, religious verse and Black Mountain-influenced poetics, with strong links to William Carlos Williams and Robert Creeley. Read more Less
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