The Crack
Denise Levertov
Levertov was staunchly independent, refusing to allow her work to be categorised or her person to be defined. She worked across genres, wrote across styles and lived across continents. Born in England in 1923, she grew up in a deeply literary household; her mother would read the great English poets aloud each night while her father brought home second-hand books of Russian, Hebrew, German and English poetry and let them slowly pile up in every room. As soon as she learnt to write, she was composing poetry and by the age of 12 had a correspondence with T.S. Eliot who offered her poetic advice. After the war, when she had already published multiple books of poetry, Levertov moved to America and fell in with the Black Mountain Poets. Experimental, naturalist and socially conscious, she began to shake the clothes of English Romanticism, projecting through content and feeling rather than strict meter or form. She would shape-shift stylistically throughout her life, writing quietly passionate poems that ranged from the spiritually mystic to potently political. Throughout it all, she remained deeply, romantically in love with the world she depicted, even when she criticised it. Poetry was a vehicle of her independence, and she was loyal to its form for her whole life.