Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov

By Lindsay Haupt and Sarah Kleban

American West in Literature Period F

At the age of five years old, Denise Levertov claimed to have decided to become a writer. Growing up, she was surrounded completely by literature. Levertov was born in Ilford, Essex, England, on October 24, 1923. She was educated primarily at home and was read stories by Tolstoy, Conrad, Dickens, as well as other stories by her mother. When she was twelve years old, Levertov sent a piece of poetry to T.S. Elliot, who replied with advice and encouragement to continue writing. By the time Levertov turned seventeen, she had her first piece of poetry published in Poetry Quarterly. Directly after publishing her piece, she became a civilian nurse during World War II, and wrote her first novel called The Double Image.
Denise Levertov moved to America after getting married to the American writer, Mitchell Goodman. She began reading the transcendentalism, the group of new ideas that states there is an ideal spiritual state, of Emerson and Thoreau. Denise Levertov spent her years writing poetry, books of prose, and anthology. She received recognition from different critics and poets including Kenneth Rexroth.

In Denise Levertov’s poem “Illustrious Ancestors”, she describes two of her ancestors. One is named Schneour Zalman, who is one of her father’s ancestors, and the other is named Angel Jones of Mold, who is on her mother’s side. The great Rav founded the Habad branch of Hasidism, loved birds, and therefore became acquainted with the natural world. He wasn’t interested in worldly materials, and as he aged, he grew up listening and learning from the environment. “He prayed with both the bench and the floor” describes how his family was once Jewish but then converted to Episcopalian; he saw two different sides of religion. He saw different sides of God. His father had worshipped God from on the floor, and then after converting, he worshipped God on the bench.
Levertov’s other ancestor, Angel Jones, lived during the 19th century, the same time period as Schneour Zalman. He was a tailor as well as a preacher. He, like Levertov’s other ancestor, was acquainted with God and enjoyed the blessings He gave. Denise Levertov tried to connect herself with her ancestors who had lived many years before. Instead of connecting to nature through God or sewing like her ancestors had done, she wrote poems to connect herself to nature. As a tailor sews a silence fills the air before the needle is put into clothe because the clothe is about to be fixed. It is about the precise work that relates them. Denise Levertov uses words to get her point across and while her ancestor uses exact stitches. All three occupations share a common theme, mysticism to the natural world.

"A Tree Telling of Orpheus"

White dawn. Stillness.When the rippling began
I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors
of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog
didn't stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched,
unmoving.
Yet the rippling drew nearer – and then
my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if
fire had been lit below them, too close, and their twig-tips
were drying and curling.
Yet I was not afraid, only
deeply alert.
I was the first to see him, for I grew
out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest.
He was a man, it seemed: the two
moving stems, the short trunk, the two
arm-branches, flexible, each with five leafless
twigs at their ends,
and the head that's crowned by brown or golden grass,
bearing a face not like the beaked face of a bird,
more like a flower's.
He carried a burden made of
some cut branch bent while it was green,
strands of a vine tight-stretched across it. From this,
when he touched it, and from his voice
which unlike the wind's voice had no need of our
leaves and branches to complete its sound,
came the ripple.
But it was now no longer a ripple (he had come near and
stopped in my first shadow) it was a wave that bathed me
as if rain
rose from below and around me
instead of falling.
And what I felt was no longer a dry tingling:
I seemed to be singing as he sang, I seemed to know
what the lark knows; all my sap
was mounting towards the sun that by now
had risen, the mist was rising, the grass
was drying, yet my roots felt music moisten them
deep under earth.

He came still closer, leaned on my trunk:
the bark thrilled like a leaf still-folded.
Music! There was no twig of me not
trembling with joy and fear.

Then as he sang
it was no longer sounds only that made the music:
he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language
came into my roots
out of the earth,
into my bark
out of the air,
into the pores of my greenest shoots
gently as dew
and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.
He told me of journeys,
of where sun and moon go while we stand in dark,
of an earth-journey he dreamed he would take some day
deeper than roots ...
He told of the dreams of man, wars, passions, griefs,
and I, a tree, understood words – ah, it seemed
my thick bark would split like a sapling's that
grew too fast in the spring
when a late frost wounds it.

Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.

Denise Levertov’s poem “A Tree Telling of Orpheus” describes an eminent connection between humans and the natural world. It tells the story of a tree’s realization of its connection with a human. At the beginning of the poem, the boundaries of the human and natural world are being crossed as “sea-wind” blows through the valley that the trees are in. The tree recognizes this as a sign of a connection with something new and then accepts the sign from the human world as being valid. The tree is “not afraid, only deeply alert” about the idea of a connection with the human world spreading through the natural world. The tree then explains the feelings involved with this connection. It says that there is a ripple coming from the man that can be felt. “And from his voice which unlike the wind’s voice had no need of our leaves and branches to complete its sound came the ripple.” This ripple lets the tree understand the man through a unique connection. “I seemed to be singing as he sang, I seemed to know what the lark knows.” The tree understands the mystical connection between the natural and human parts of the world. “Then as he sang it was no longer sounds only that made music: he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language came into my roots.” This tree is able to connect with the person because it listened to the human and accepted the connection. The man tells him about the “dreams of man, wars, passions, griefs, and I, a tree, understood words.” The tree accepts this strong connection with a human that it has recognized.
This poem has a different perspective on the relationship between humans and the natural world. Instead of showing this connection as a person might feel it, it portrays how a tree might recognize the connection. The tree describes a human in the same manner that we would describe a tree. We could call a tree’s limbs arms, and the tree describes the man as having “two moving stems, the short trunk, the two arm-branches, flexible, each with five leafless twigs at their ends.” This helps the reader view the situation from a new perspective. This poem shows how the boundaries which are normally accepted by the world may not be as strict as they seem. It shows how there are many connections with nature that can be recognized if viewed with an open mind. When the tree first began to acknowledge a connection, it accepted it rather than being skeptical about it. This allowed the tree to establish a stronger connection with the humans.
The feelings that are described in this poem are very powerful. The connection which is felt by the tree is first described as a ripple, and then more intensely as a wave and a recognizable song. “It was no longer a ripple it was a wave that bathed me as if rain rose from below and around me instead of falling.”
This poem is called A Tree Telling of Orpheus because Orpheus was an ancient poet and musician whose music had the power to move inanimate objects. This poet is said to have been able to cross these physical boundaries, just as the tree crosses the boundaries between nature and humans.