Levertov

’s Final Interview Essay, Research Paper

A Poet’s Valediction

by Nicholas O’Connell

In a final interview, poet

Denise Levertov discusses the egotism

of modern poetry, the sacredness of writing, and the spiritual hunger

of our technologically dependent society.

Denise Levertov, who died on December 20,

1997, was much loved by her readers and an inspiration to several generations of poets.

She forged a middle path in modern poetry, marrying the hard, dry objective style of the

Imagist poets with the music and metaphysical yearnings of figures such as T.S. Eliot.

Like her mentor, William Carlos Williams, Levertov excelled at the direct presentation of

the object, and yet she went further, endowing such objects with rich metaphorical

significance. Born in England, she emigrated to America with her husband after World War

II, and spent the last years of her life in Seattle, Washington, near one of her most

profound influences, Mt. Rainier.

During her lifetime, Levertov published more than

20 books of poetry as well as translations and essays. Her most recent publications are The

Life Around Us: Selected Poems on Nature and The Stream & the Sapphire:

Selected Poems on Religious Themes, both published by New Directions in 1997.

The following interview was conducted on October

27, 1997, at Levertov’s home, a cozy brick house in the Seward Park neighborhood of

Seattle. Levertov still retained British mannerisms—a soft English accent, a

humorous, conspiratorial tone, and a preference for Earl Grey tea with milk and sugar,

which she served throughout our talk.

O’Connell: When did you first start writing

poems.

Levertov: As a small child.

Why did you write them.

I had the impulse to do so.

You never asked why.

No.

Were you good at it.

I was secretive about it, actually. From a very

early age, I knew that I was going to write poetry. I also thought I was going to be a

painter and I spent several years studying ballet. But when you have a real vocation, a

lot of the other things fall by the wayside and you’re left with the main thing.

How did you learn your craft.

By writing and a lot of reading.

Did you have teachers.

No. I hardly even went to school. I did lessons

at home with my mother. I didn’t attend school ever, except ballet school.

How did that influence your approach to

poetry.

I think it was beneficial. With my particular

abilities, I was very fortunate. I never had to read anything I didn’t want to read, or

write anything I didn’t feel like writing. Of course I came from a very literate and

somewhat literary background. I grew up in a house full of books where everybody read.

That’s how evenings were spent by the family. It was like a Victorian childhood.

We were not an English family. My parents had

lived in so many places, and the people who visited us were from all over Europe.

My father was a Hassidic Jew, who had a very

pious ancestry. He had converted to Christianity while at the university in Germany. By

the time I was born he had settled in England and become an Anglican parson. He was a very

well known preacher and scholar but was looked at askance, because if you weren’t Oxford

and Cambridge and Eton and Harrow, they didn’t know what to make of you. So I had the

feeling of being European, although I adore the English countryside and English

literature.

When did you first start publishing your

work.

The first poem I published was written when I was

sixteen. My first book, The Double Image [1946], was written between the ages of

seventeen and twenty-one. It came out when I was twenty-two. That was published in England

before I came over here.

Was William Carlos Williams an important

early influence.

When I was a greenhorn in America trying to come

to grips with my new situation in life, his influence was very immediate and imitative.

You can see it in some of those early poems. It’s very clear. It sticks out.

He was very fond of me and amazed that someone

who understood what he was talking about and writing in ways that he approved of would

come out of England. He was pretty anti-English.

I first read Williams in a bookstore in Paris. My

late ex-husband and I were living there then. I started reading him and Stevens around

that time.

What did you find attractive about his work.

After I got over here, I suffered from

undiagnosed culture shock. The rhythm of people’s walk, speech, and everything was

entirely different. We’d been living a student life in Paris, staying in pensions, with

parents, and not living a regular married life. Then we came over here. Suddenly I was

pregnant. I had to learn how to buy groceries on a shoestring and things like that.

Williams was a sort of gateway into my o

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