first line from Denise Levertov’s “The Gypsy's Window” in Here and Now (City Lights,1957) it seems a stage and all the lights that flicker (causing intermittent fits) appear to form a prim proscenium the night is made of artificial satin presses in upon us swaddles us in ersatz anonymity where the safety curtain falls the dust of decades billows up in choking clouds of fallen face paint and disintegrated scripts and we look hopelessly towards the wings waiting for a prompt we know will never come

"It Seems a Stage"

From a sequence, "Pocket Lights", each starting with the first line of a poem from a City Lights "Pocket Poets" volumes

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #deniselevertov
@citylightsbooks.bsky.social

#WomensHistoryMonth
#InternationalWomensDay
#Women #Poets #Poetry
#DeniseLevertov
#WomenPoets

✍️

"A gratitude had begun to sing in me."

- Denise Levertov

#thankfulthursday

A gratitude had begun to sing in me.

- Denise Levertov

#poetry #mysticpoetry #deniselevertov

Some people, no matter what you give them, still want the moon. The bread, the salt, white meat and dark, still hungry. The marriage bed and the cradle, still empty arms. You give them land, their own earth under their feet, still they take to the roads. And water: dig them the deepest well, still it’s not deep enough to drink the moon from.

#Poetry
#Poem
#BlueskyPoetry
#DeniseLevertov

Adam's Complaint by Denise Levertov

#thankfulthursday

A gratitude had begun to sing in me.

- Denise Levertov

#poetry #mysticpoetry #deniselevertov

"A gratitude had begun to sing in me."

- Denise Levertov

#poetry #mysticpoetry #deniselevertov #levertov #gratitude #gratituesday #thankfulthursday

PRIMARY WONDER
By #DeniseLevertov

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.

#Poetry: www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/denise...

✒️ #DeniseLevertov, British-born American poet and essayist, #DOTD 20 December 1997. #Literature

This person would be an animal. This animal would be large, at least as large as a workhorse. It would chew cud, like cows, having several stomachs. No one could follow it into the dense brush to witness its mating habits. Hidden by fur, its sex would be hard to determine. Definitely it would discourage investigation. But it would be, if not teased, a kind, amiable animal, confiding as a chickadee. Its intelligence would be of a high order, neither human nor animal, elvish. And it would purr, though of course, it being a house, you would sit in its lap, not it in yours.

#Poetry
#Poem
#BlueskyPoetry
#DeniseLevertov

What My House Would Be Like If It Were A Person by Denise Levertov

Sunset 27/10/25 Quand chacun de tes jours/Te sera sacré,/Quand chacune de tes heures/Te sera sacrée,/Quand chacun de tes instants/Te sera sacré,/Quand la terre et toi,/L’espace avec toi/Portorez le sacre/Au long de vos jours,/Alors tu seras dans le champ de gloire. --Guillevic, ‘Ouverture,’ in ‘Guillevic: Selected Poems’ (137-38)

When each day
is sacred,
when each hour
is sacred,
when each instant
is sacred,
earth and you,
space and you,
bearing the sacred
through time
you'll reach the fields of light.

- #EugèneGuillevic, 'Opening’ tr. #DeniseLevertov

Born on this day in 1923, Denise Levertov (1923–1997) was a poet whose work bridged the spiritual and political. Her poems on faith, nature, and peace—like The Freeing of the Dust—made her one of modern poetry’s most resonant voices. “Peace as a woman, clothed in light.”
#DeniseLevertov #OTD

WITNESS

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.

- #DeniseLevertov

Your #existential PSA for the day, courtesy of #DeniseLevertov:

Antología poética
#DeniseLevertov #leoycomparto

rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

-from ' #DeniseLevertov: Selected Poems'

PRIMARY WONDER
by #DeniseLevertov

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.

To speak of sorrow works upon it, moves it from its crouched place barring the way to and from the soul’s hall.

- #DeniseLevertov

You have come to the shore.
There are no instructions.

- #DeniseLevertov

I heard Gary Snyder read in 1982 with other anthropologist poets.
Sitting beside me a man wrote notes, grading the others. (C+, B-)
He was Fred Martin, editor at New Directions. He edited Snyder & #DeniseLevertov.
Later I mailed him my poems and he responded with an encouraging note!

"A gratitude had begun to sing in me."
- Denise Levertov
#poetry #gratitude
#levertov #deniselevertov

"Some people,
no matter what you give them,
still want the moon."
-- Denise Levertov

#DeniseLevertov #Levertov #moon #love #life #death #desire #poems #books #literature #England #ElainedeKooning #painting

Poems become stepping stones in one’s slow pilgrimage…small Virgils leading the soul’s Dante around the spiral of hell and paradise.

- #DeniseLevertov, “Poetry, Prophecy, Survival,”

"A gratitude had begun to sing in me."
- Denise Levertov
#poetry #mysticpoetry #deniselevertov

LOOKING, WALKING, BEING
By #DeniseLevertov

"𝑻𝙝𝒆 𝑾𝙤𝒓𝙡𝒅 𝒊𝙨 𝙣𝒐𝙩 𝙨𝒐𝙢𝒆𝙩𝒉𝙞𝒏𝙜 𝙩𝒐
𝒍𝙤𝒐𝙠 𝙖𝒕, 𝙞𝒕 𝒊𝙨 𝙨𝒐𝙢𝒆𝙩𝒉𝙞𝒏𝙜 𝙩𝒐 𝒃𝙚 𝙞𝒏."
𝑴𝙖𝒓𝙠 𝙍𝒖𝙙𝒎𝙖𝒏

I look and look.
Looking's a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.

"Transparent eyeball" as illustrated by Christopher Pearse Cranch, ca. 1836-1838, originated by American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Looking’s a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.

- #DeniseLevertov, 'Looking, Walking, Being'

Denise Levertov (USA) - collettivo culturale tuttomondo Ci sono momenti in cui non ti senti ... Just when you seem to yourself ... di Denise Levertov (Ilford, 1923–Seattle, 1997) - cctm poesia

Un dono di Denise Levertov (Ilford, 1923–Seattle, 1997)

Ci sono momenti in cui non ti senti
d’essere altro che un fragile groviglio
di domande ... cctm.website/denise-lever...

#deniselevertov #poesia #cctmwebsite #anoipiaceleggere #leggere

LOOKING, WALKING, BEING
By #DeniseLevertov

I look and look.
Looking’s a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.

Women of the Beat Generation

Denise Levertov

#poetry #deniselevertov

New video from PHOEBE!

Read the post here:
www.instagram.com/p/DGwD_G7MMX...

#videoclip #forest #elves #folk #poetry #DeniseLevertov #PHOEBE #Sauvageoness #dance #silvertonguesoflove

A voice from the dark called out, "The poets must give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar imagination of disaster. Peace, not only the absence of war." But peace, like a poem, is not there ahead of itself, can't be imagined before it is made, can't be known except in the words of its making, grammar of justice, syntax of mutual aid. A feeling towards it, dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have until we begin to utter its metaphors, learning them as we speak. A line of peace might appear if we restructured the sentence our lives are making, revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power, questioned our needs, allowed long pauses. . . . A cadence of peace might balance its weight on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence, an energy field more intense than war, might pulse then, stanza by stanza into the world, each act of living one of its words, each word a vibration of light—facets of the forming crystal.

#Poetry
#Poem
#BlueskyPoetry
#DeniseLevertov

Making Peace by Denise Levertov