Where is the angel levertov

And certainly some people are more willing than I was to settle into the comfortable. Thanks for sharing your insights into so many writers. My wishes for your good health. It was wonderful to read your interpretation of this poem because i did not understand it in the same way. To me the glass bubble was not the safety of her world it was more of something that she retreated to after being quite badly hurt.

I understood it as a numbness she entered, where life was still happening around her yet she was not fazed by it and then in the end she was finally ready to BE again and break out of her funk and be heard just to simply be heard again. But the way you saw this poem gave me such a different understanding! Its bewildering! Thank you and best of health to you too. Thanks for the comment. Try to find a couple of other readings, interpretations, Mariya. No driving snow in the glass bubble, but mild September.

Such clear walls of curved glass: I see the violent gesticulations and feel—no, not nothing. History mouths, volume turned off. In here it is pleasant, but when I open my mouth to speak, I too am soundless. Where is the angel to wrestle with me and wound not my thigh but my throat, so curses and blessings flow storming out and the glass shatters, and the iron sunders? Denise Levertov The Great Black Heron Since I stroll in the woods more often than on this frequented path, it's usually trees I observe; but among fellow humans what I like best is to see an old woman fishing alone at the end of a jetty, hours on end, plainly content.

The Russians mushroom-hunting after a rain trail after themselves a world of red sarafans, nightingales, samovars, stoves to sleep on though without doubt those are not what they can remember. Vietnamese families fishing or simply sitting as close as they can to the water, make me recall that lake in Hanoi in the amber light, our first, jet-lagged evening, peace in the war we had come to witness.

This woman engaged in her pleasure evokes an entire culture, tenacious field-flower growing itself among the rows of cotton in red-earth country, under the feet of mules and masters.

I see her a barefoot child by a muddy river learning her skill with the pole. What battles has she survived, what labors? She's gathered up all the time in the world —nothing else—and waits for scanty trophies, complete in herself as a heron. In California During the Gulf War Among the blight-killed eucalypts, among trees and bushes rusted by Christmas frosts, the yards and hillsides exhausted by five years of drought, certain airy white blossoms punctually reappeared, and dense clusters of pale pink, dark pink— a delicate abundance.

They seemed like guests arriving joyfully on the accustomed festival day, unaware of the year's events, not perceiving the sackcloth others were wearing. To some of us, the dejected landscape consorted well with our shame and bitterness. Skies ever-blue, daily sunshine, disgusted us like smile-buttons. Yet the blossoms, clinging to thin branches more lightly than birds alert for flight, lifted the sunken heart even against its will.

But not as symbols of hope: they were flimsy as our resistance to the crimes committed —again, again—in our name; and yes, they return, year after year, and yes, they briefly shone with serene joy over against the dark glare of evil days.

They are , and their presence is quietness ineffable—and the bombings are , were, no doubt will be; that quiet, that huge cacophany simultaneous. No promise was being accorded, the blossoms were not doves, there was no rainbow.

And when it was claimed the war had ended, it had not ended. Academy of American Poets Educator Newsletter. Her essay on "Poetry, Prophecy, Survival" captures the interplay between her commitments to witness and praise: "If we lose the sense of contrast of the opposites to all the grime and gore, the torture, the banality of the computerized apocalypse, we lose the reason for trying to work for redemptive change.

These twin commitments brought Levertov, an English-born American poet, into intimate connection, as well as passionate conflict, with the Divine.

In a very real sense, her faith life, her artistic life, and her political life were all of a piece, and all were informed with the kind of passion that kept Jacob up all night wrestling with an angel, demanding a new name for himself. This winter marks the fifteenth anniversary of Levertov's death. She passed away on December 20, , after a long struggle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The United States Post Office recently issued a stamp commemorating her as one of the ten most important poets of the twentieth century, and the first of two critical biographies about her was released this past year, with the other due out this spring.

Although her first, more traditional book was published in England, Levertov came to prominence when she immigrated to America and adapted her English sensibility to the open forms and speech idioms that had been championed by William Carlos Williams.

Her passionate denunciation of the Vietnam War, her active participation in antiwar organizing and protests, and her subsequent work on behalf of the environment earned her the devotion of a generation of activists.

Her conversion to Catholicism in the last two decades of her life, along with her deeply moving religious poetry, earned her yet another group of devoted fans. I was fortunate to have Levertov as a teacher, mentor, and great friend, so I am able to offer some insight into her life work by sharing my own reflections on our many personal discussions on politics, poetry, and God wrestling.