Hilton Obenzinger introduction at Denise Levertov Celebration

"A Celebration of the Life and Poetry of Denise Levertov" Cubberley Auditorium, School of Education, Stanford University Thursday, November 2, 2017, 7:30 pm Edited by Peter Y. Chou WisdomPortal.com

Denise Levertov reading six poems (1994 Video)

Preface: I received an email from Stanford Creative Writing Program on November 1 on "A Celebration of the Life and Poetry of Denise Levertov" celebrating the 20th anniversary of her death (December 20, 1997). The free event was held at Stanford's Cubberley Auditorium on Thursday, November 2, 2017 at 7:30 pm. Denise Levertov is one of my favorite poets, and I went to her reading many years ago, where she autographed one of her books. She mentioned that as a young girl in London, she dreamt of becoming a ballerina. But realizing that her talent for dancing was limited, she focused more of her energy on writing and poetry. This is an event I really looked forward in attending. Foothill Library has no Levertov poetry books, but checked out her 1995 memoir Tesserae. Enjoyed reading the first story: "The Sack Full of Wings", (pp. 1-2)— Levertov's Dad & Marc Chagall were both born in Vitebsk, Russia— they knew the pedlar with a big sack whom Chagall painted. I left Foothill College Krause Center and caught the 5:17 pm Bus #40 to Showers Drive; Got on 5:52 pm Bus #22 to Palo Alto Train Depot; Got on 6:20 pm Stanford Palm XPress to the Oval. Arrived at Cubberley Auditorium at 6:40 pm. The door was not opened until 7:00 pm, so I got a good seat at left side five rows from front near the Exit sign. Picked up a few flyers for friends that had a short Levertov bio and the discussants & readers tonight— Albert J. Gelpi, Eavan Boland, Kay Kostopoulos, JoAnne Winter, and Hilton Obenzinger. I took seven pages of notes, recording all 25 Levertov poems read tonight with their first lines. Since each poem was flashed on the screen, it made taking the notes much easier. At the conclusion, a video of Denise Levertov reading six of her poems in 1994 was shown. This was a real treat hearing her voice.     The Poetry Reading was over at 9:05 pm. I got the 9:20 pm Palm XPress to the Train Depot. Took the 9:34 pm Bus #22 to San Antonio Road & El Camino at 9:52. Went to CVS and used the $5 coupon to buy two large bottles of whole cashews, deluxe mixed nuts, and Yuban instant coffee for $21.96 (10:11 pm). Caught the last 10:21 pm Bus #40 to take me home.     I've typed all 25 poems read at this event with links to their source. The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov (2013) that I placed on hold at Los Altos Library has just come in from the Saratoga Library. It is a heavy volume with 1063 pages. Posted poems will save time typing, but need to check all poems on the web with this definitive book to make sure the original line breaks & indentations were adhered to. Items in [brackets] were added with links while typing these notes. Hilton Obenzinger began this event thanking Associate Provost & Dean Charles Junkerman and the Stanford Continual Studies Program for hosting this celebration. He cited previous celebrations of 150th Anniversary of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (2005), Herman Melville's Moby Dick (2015) and the Poetry of Emily Dickinson (2008) and Robert Frost (2013). Eavan Boland: Albert J. Gelpi brought Denise Levertov to Stanford. Ken Fields worked with Denise in the Stanford poetry workshops. When I came to Stanford in 1995, Levertov spoke to me on teaching the Stegner Fellows. Teaching young poets is helping our community. She spoke to me after dinner, "You must make your own decisions teaching poets." Robert Creeley, a long-time friend said Denise was "dogged" in many ways. She refused to separate moral and ethnic vision. We'll trace her poetic arc tonight. Denise Levertov is a hero of the ethnic imagination. Albert J. Gelpi: Denise described herself as a stranger and pilgrim. She died on December 20, 1997, so this is the 20th anniversary of her passing. Today, November 2 is All Souls' Day [In Christianity, All Souls' Day commemorates All Souls, the Holy Souls, or the Faithful Departed; that is, the souls of Christians who have died.] Below are the 25 Levertov poems read tonight, including the book & date when it appeared. Page numbers refer to the The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov (2013). The reader of the poem & web source are noted in parenthesis. (1) Illustrious Ancestors [pp. 83-84 from Overland to the Islands, 1958] (Jo-Anne) (web) The Rav of Northern White Russia declined, in his youth, to learn the language of birds, because the extraneous did not interest him; nevertheless when he grew old it was found he understood them anyway, having listened well, and as it is said, 'prayed                       with the bench and the floor.' He used what was at hand— as did Angel Jones of Mold, whose meditations were sewn into coats and britches.                       Well, I would like to make, thinking some line still taut between me and them, poems direct as what the birds said, hard as a floor, sound as a bench, mysterious as the silence when the tailor would pause with his needle in the air. (2) A Map of the Western Part of the County of Essex in England       [pp. 145-146 from The Jacob's Ladder, 1961] (Eavan) (web) Something forgotten for twenty years: though my fathers and mothers came from Cordova and Vitepsk and Caernarvon, and though I am a citizen of the United States and less a stranger here than anywhere else, perhaps, I am Essex-born: Cranbrook Wash called me into its dark tunnel, the little streams of Valentines heard my resolves, Roding held my head above water when I thought it was drowning me; in Hainault only a haze of thin trees stood between the red doubledecker buses and the boar-hunt, the spirit of merciful Phillipa glimmered there. Pergo Park knew me, and Clavering, and Havering-atte-Bower, Stanford Rivers lost me in osier beds, Stapleford Abbots sent me safe home on the dark road after Simeon-quiet evensong, Wanstead drew me over and over into its basic poetry, in its serpentine lake I saw bass-viols among the golden dead leaves, through its trees the ghost of a great house. In Ilford High Road I saw the multitudes passing pale under the light of flaring sundown, seven kings in somber starry robes gathered at Seven Kings the place of law where my birth and marriage are recorded and the death of my father. Woodford Wells where an old house was called The Naked Beauty (a white statue forlorn in its garden) saw the meeting and parting of two sisters, (forgotten? and further away the hill before Thaxted? where peace befell us? not once but many times?). All the Ivans dreaming of their villages all the Marias dreaming of their walled cities, picking up fragments of New World slowly, not knowing how to put them together nor how to join image with image, now I know how it was with you, an old map made long before I was born shows ancient rights of way where I walked when I was ten burning with desire for the world's great splendors, a child who traced voyages indelibly all over the atlas, who now in a far country remembers the first river, the first field, bricks and lumber dumped in it ready for building, that new smell, and remembers the walls of the garden, the first light. Albert J. Gelpi: At the age of 12, Denise sent T.S. Eliot some of her poems. He responded [with a two-page typewritten letter, offering her 'excellent advice.']. Levertov's first book of poems The Double Image was published just after WW II in 1946. Kenneth Rexroth praised her poems ["It could be compared to the earliest poems of Rilke or some of the more melancholy songs of Brahms."] Denise made herself an American poet. She was friends with Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan. William Carlos Williams said her poems are musical with abiding wonder of all. [1st edition signed copy of The Double Image for $350 at Babcock Books, Derry, NH] (3) Matins [pp. 170-173 from The Jacob's Ladder, 1961] (Kay) (web) i The authentic! Shadows of it sweep past in dreams, one could say imprecisely, evoking the almost-silent ripping apart of giant sheets of cellophane. No. It thrusts up close. Exactly in dreams it has you off-guard, you recognize it before you have time. For a second before waking the alarm bell is a red conical hat, it takes form. ii The authentic! I said rising from the toilet seat. The radiator in rhythmic knockings spoke of the rising steam. The authentic, I said breaking the handle of my hairbrush as I brushed my hair in rhythmic strokes: That's it, that's joy, it's always a recognition, the known appearing fully itself, and more itself than one knew. iii The new day rises as heat rises, knocking in the pipes with rhythms it seizes for its own to speak of its invention— the real, the new-laid egg whose speckled shell the poet fondles and must break if he will be nourished. iv A shadow painted where yes, a shadow must fall. The cow's breath not forgotten in the mist, in the words. Yes, verisimilitude draws up heat in us, zest to follow through, follow through, follow transformations of day in its turning, in its becoming. v Stir the holy grains, set the bowls on the table and call the child to eat. While we eat we think, as we think an undercurrent of dream runs through us faster than thought towards recognition. Call the child to eat, send him off, his mouth tasting of toothpaste, to go down into the ground, into a roaring train and to school. His cheeks are pink his black eyes hold his dreams, he has left forgetting his glasses. Follow down the stairs at a clatter to give them to him and save his clear sight. Cold air comes in at the street door. vi The authentic! It rolls just out of reach, beyond running feet and stretching fingers, down the green slope and into the black waves of the sea. Speak to me, little horse, beloved, tell me how to follow the iron ball, how to follow through to the country beneath the waves to the place where I must kill you and you step out of your bones and flystrewn meat tall, smiling, renewed, formed in your own likeness. vii Marvelous Truth, confront us at every turn, in every guise, iron ball, egg, dark horse, shadow, cloud of breath on the air, dwell in our crowded hearts our steaming bathrooms, kitchens full of things to be done, the ordinary streets. Thrust close your smile that we know you, terrible joy. Albert J. Gelpi: In "Some Notes of Organic Form" [Poetry Magazine, September 1965], Denise writes: "To contemplate is not simply to observe, but to do things in the presence of a god. And to meditate is to muse, to stand with open mouth— to breathe in. So, as the poet stands open-mouthed in the temple of live, contemplating his experience, the first words of the poem come to him." (4) The Ripple [p. 189 from O Taste and See, 1964] (Albert) (web) On white linen the silk of grey shadows threefold, over- lapping, a tau cross. Glass jug and tumblers rise from that which they cast. And luminous in each overcast of cylindrical shade, image of water, a brightness not gold, not silver rippling as if with laughter. [Note: On the web, the fifth line is mistyped "tall cross" instead of "tau cross". Tau is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet. In ancient times, tau was used as a symbol for life or resurrection. Tau is usually considered as the symbol of Franciscan orders due to St. Francis' love for it, symbol of the redemption and of the Cross. After reading this poem, Gelpi mentioned Levertov's use of "tau cross" symbolizes Egyptian mystery.] (5) The Garden Wall [p. 218 from O Taste and See, 1964] (Jo-Anne) (web) Bricks of the wall, so much older than the house— taken I think from a farm pulled down when the street was built— narrow bricks of another century. Modestly, though laid with panels and parapets, a wall behind the flowers— roses and hollyhocks, the silver pods of lupine, sweet-tasting phlox, gray lavender— unnoticed— but I discovered the colors in the wall that woke when spray from the hose played on its pocks and warts— a hazy red, a grain gold, a mauve of small shadows, sprung from the quiet dry brown— archetype of the world always a step beyond the world, that can't be looked for, only as the eye wanders, found. (6) O Taste and See [pp. 213-214 from O Taste and See, 1964] (Kay) (web) The world is not with us enough. O taste and see the subway Bible poster said, meaning The Lord, meaning if anything all that lives to the imagination's tongue, grief, mercy, language, tangerine, weather, to breathe them, bite, savor, chew, swallow, transform into our flesh our deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince, living in the orchard and being hungry, and plucking the fruit. (7) Eros at Temple Stream [p. 215 from O Taste and See, 1964] (Kay) (web) The river in its abundance many-voiced all about us as we stood on a warm rock to wash slowly smoothing in long                              sliding strokes our soapy hands along each other's slippery cool bodies Quiet and slow in the midst of the quick of the sounding river our hands were flames stealing upon quickened flesh until no part of us but was sleek and on fire (8) Stepping Westward [p. 215 from The Sorrow Dance, 1967] (Kay) (web) What is green in me darkens, muscadine. If woman is inconstant, good, I am faithful to ebb and flow, I fall in season and now is a time of ripening. If her part is to be true, a north star, good, I hold steady in the black sky and vanish by day, yet burn there in blue or above quilts of cloud. There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am, a shadow that grows longer as the sun moves, drawn out on a thread of wonder. If I bear burdens they begin to be remembered as gifts, goods, a basket of bread that hurts my shoulders but closes me in fragrance, I can eat as I go. (9) Claritas [pp. 201-202 from O Taste and See, 1964] (Jo-Anne) (Poetry, July 1963) i The All-Day Bird, the artist, whitethroated sparrow, striving in hope and good faith to make his notes ever more precise, closer to what he knows. ii There is the proposition and the development. The way one grows from the other. The All-Day Bird ponders. iii May the first note be round enough and those that follow fine, fine as sweetgrass,                    prays the All-Day Bird. iv Fine as the tail of a lizard, as a leaf of chives— the shadow of a difference falling between note and note, a hair's breadth defining them. v The dew is on the vineleaves. My tree is lit with the break of day. vi Sun light.         Light light light light. Albert J. Gelpi: In the course of the 1960s Mitch Goodman and Denise Levertov felt injustice in American's War in Vietnam. Denise's husband Mitch organized many anti-war movements while Denise wrote lots of poems against the Vietnamese War. Denise's friend Robert Duncan warned her as a poet, she should not get too involved with politics. In a 1991 essay, Levertov wrote "Being a child of a socially conscious family, I cannot remain silent with this injustice." (10) City Psalm [p. 262 from The Sorrow Dance, 1967] (Jo-Anne) (web) The killings continue, each second pain and misfortune extend themselves in the genetic chain, injustice is done knowingly, and the air bears the dust of decayed hopes, yet breathing those fumes, walking the thronged pavements among crippled lives, jackhammers raging, a parking lot painfully agleam in the May sun, I have seen not behind but within, within the dull grief, blown grit, hideous concrete facades, another grief, a gleam as of dew, an abode of mercy, have heard not behind but within noise a humming that drifted into a quiet smile. Nothing was changed, all was revealed otherwise; not that horror was not, not that killings did not continue, not that I thought there was to be no more despair, but that as if transparent all disclosed an otherness that was blessed, that was bliss. I saw Paradise in the dust of the street. [Note: On the web, the fourth line from bottom is missing "not that I thought there was to be no more despair,"; A recording of this poem is read live by Denise Levertov in 1965 at the 92Y.] (11) Candles in Babylon [p. 601 from Candles in Babylon, 1982] (Jo-Anne) (web) Through the midnight streets of Babylon between the steel towers of their arsenals, between the torture castles with no windows, we race by barefoot, holding tight our candles, trying to shield the shivering flames, crying 'Sleepers Awake!'                              'hoping the rhyme's promise was true, that we may return from this place of terror home to a calm dawn and the work we had just begun. [Levertov Reading in 1981 at Bloomfield, Michigan; 1982 Kirkus Review of book] (12) Advent 1966 [pp. 342-343 from To Stay Alive, 1971] (Albert) (web) Because in Vietnam the vision of a Burning Babe is multiplied, multiplied,                                         the flesh on fire not Christ's, as Southwell saw it, prefiguring the Passion upon the Eve of Christmas, but wholly human and repeated, repeated, infant after infant, their names forgotten, their sex unknown in the ashes, set alight, flaming but not vanishing, not vanishing as his vision but lingering, cinders upon the earth or living on moaning and stinking in hospitals three abed; because of this my strong sight, my clear caressive sight, my poet's sight I was given that it might stir me to song, is blurred.                 There is a cataract filming over my inner eyes. Or else a monstrous insect has entered my head, and looks out from my sockets with multiple vision, seeing not the unique Holy Infant burning sublimely, an imagination of redemption, furnace in which souls are wrought into new life, but, as off a beltline, more, more senseless figures aflame. And this insect (who is not there— it is my own eyes do my seeing, the insect is not there, what I see is there) will not permit me to look elsewhere, or if I look, to see except dulled and unfocused the delicate, firm, whole flesh of the still unburned. [On Denise Levertov's Vietnam Poetry; Robert Southwell; "Burning Babe" (1595); Commentary on Christmas Poem] (13) Thinking about El Salvador [p. 700 from Oblique Prayers, 1984] (Kay) (web) Because every day they chop heads off I'm silent. In each person's head they chopped off was a tongue, for each tongue they silence a word in my mouth unsays itself. From each person's head two eyes looked at the world; for each gaze they cut a line of seeing unwords itself. Because every day they chop heads off no force flows into language, thoughts think themselves worthless. No blade of machete threatens my neck, but its muscles cringe and tighten, my voice hides in its throat-cave ashamed to sound                into that silence, the silence of raped women, of priests and peasants, teachers and children, of all whose heads every day float down the river and rot and sink, not Orpheus heads still singing, bound for the sea, but mute. (14) Making Peace [pp. 757-758 from Beathing the Water, 1987] (Jo-Anne) (web) 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. Albert J. Gelpi: During the upheavals of 1960s and 1970s, Denise Levertov aligned herself with other protesters of the Vietnamese War and social injustice— Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan, and Thomas Merton. They believed that power did not reside in politicians but God. Levertov poems of 1980s and 1990s have more Christian concerns. [Note: A slide of Day, Berrigan, & Merton was flashed on the screen, but I didn't photographed it. The photos at right were found on Google Images with links to their sources.] Dorothy Day Daniel Berrigan Thomas Merton (15) Caedmon [pp. 766-767 from Beathing the Water, 1987] (Kay) (web) All others talked as if talk were a dance. Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet would break the gliding ring. Early I learned to hunch myself close by the door: then when the talk began I'd wipe my mouth and wend unnoticed back to the barn to be with the warm beasts, dumb among body sounds of the simple ones. I'd see by a twist of lit rush the motes of gold moving from shadow to shadow slow in the wake of deep untroubled sighs. The cows munched or stirred or were still. I was at home and lonely, both in good measure. Until the sudden angel affrighted me— light effacing my feeble beam, a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying: but the cows as before were calm, and nothing was burning,                  nothing but I, as that hand of fire touched my lips and scorched my tongue and pulled my voice                                 into the ring of the dance. (16) Annunciation [pp. 836-838 from A Door in the Hive, 1989] (Jo-Anne) (web)                    'Hail, space for the uncontained God'                                   From the Agathistos Hymn,                                                            Greece, VIc We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, almost always a lectern, a book; always the tall lily.                     Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering, whom she acknowledges, a guest. But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage.                     The engendering Spirit did not enter her without consent.                                                 God waited. She was free to accept or to refuse, choice integral to humanness.               ____________________ Aren't there annunciations of one sort or another in most lives?                       Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending.                More often those moments       when roads of light and storm       open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief. Ordinary lives continue.                                     God does not smite them. But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.               ____________________ She had been a child who played, ate, slept like any other child— but unlike others, wept only for pity, laughed in joy not triumph. Compassion and intelligence fused in her, indivisible. Called to a destiny more momentous than any in all of Time, she did not quail,                             only asked a simple, 'How can this be?' and gravely, courteously, took to heart the angel's reply, the astounding ministry she was offered: to bear in her womb Infinite weight and lightness; to carry in hidden, finite inwardness, nine months of Eternity; to contain in slender vase of being, the sum of power— in narrow flesh, the sum of light.                         Then bring to birth, push out into air, a Man-child needing, like any other, milk and love— but who was God. This was the moment no one speaks of, when she could still refuse. A breath unbreathed,                                   Spirit,                                               suspended,                                                                  waiting.               ____________________ She did not cry, 'I cannot. I am not worthy,' Nor, 'I have not the strength.' She did not submit with gritted teeth,                                                             raging, coerced. Bravest of all humans,                                     consent illumined her. The room filled with its light, the lily glowed in it,                                 and the iridescent wings. Consent,               courage unparalleled, opened her utterly. (17) The Avowal [p. 728 from Oblique Prayers, 1984] (Jo-Anne) (web)                   For Carolyn Kizer and John Woodbridge,                   Recalling Our Celebration                   of the 300th Birthday of George Herbert, 1983 As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky and water bears them, as hawks rest upon air and air sustains them, so would I learn to attain freefall, and float into Creator Spirit's deep embrace, knowing no effort earns that all-surrounding grace. (18) Passage [p. 735 from Oblique Prayers, 1984] (Albert) (web) The spirit that walked upon the face of the waters walks the meadow of long grass; green shines to silver where the spirit passes. Wind from the compass points, sun at meridian, these are forms the spirit enters, breath, ruach, light that is witness and by which we witness. The grasses numberless, bowing and rising, silently cry hosanna as the spirit moves them and moves burnishing over and again upon mountain pastures a day of spring, a needle's eye space and time are passing through like a swathe of silk. Albert J. Gelpi: The poet breathes out the poem. The four sets of tercets deveop the Latin "spiritus" as "spirit" & "wind" & "breath" and project the Hebrew ruach— God's breath blowing over primordial waters in Genesis. The alliteration of initial "w"s ("walked", "waters", "walks", "wind") thickens in the middle line to give the "breath, ruach, light". The first syllable of the title-word "Passage" blows through the poem— "grass", "passes", "compass", "grasses", "pastures"— to the last line "passing". The "s" sounds in every line build to the exquisitely sibilant revelation of "space and time" passing through the spring day like a swathe of silk. [Gelpi's American Poetry after Modernism, pp. 201-202] Denise Levertov in her library (19) I Lake Mountain Moon [p. 853 from Evening Train, 1992] (Jo-Anne) (web) Settling I was welcomed here— clear gold of late summer, of opening autumn, the dawn eagle sunning himself on the highest tree, the mountain revealing herself unclouded, her snow tinted apricot as she looked west, tolerant, in her steadfastness, of the restless sun forever rising and setting.                                           Now I am given a taste of the grey foretold by all and sundry, a grey both heavy and chill. I've boasted I would not care, I'm London-born. And I won't. I'll dig in, into my days, having come here to live, not to visit. Grey is the price of neighboring with eagles, of knowing a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen. Elusive The mountain comes and goes on the horizon,                         a rhythm elusive as that of a sea-wave                         higher than all the rest, riding to shore                         flying its silver banners— you count to seven, but no, its measure                   slips by you with each recurrence. (20) Morning Mist [pp. 853-854 from Evening Train, 1992] (Kay) (web) The mountain absent, a remote folk-memory. The peninsula vanished, hill, trees— gone, shoreline a rumour. And we equate God with these absences— Deus absconditus. But God is imaged as well or better in the white stillness resting everywhere, giving to all things an hour of Sabbath, no leaf stirring, the hidden places tranquil in solitude. (21) Presence [p. 854 from Evening Train, 1992] (Jo-Anne) (web) Though the mountain's the same warm-tinted ivory as the clouds (as if red ground had been laid beneath. not quite translucent white) and though the clouds disguise its shoulders, and rise tall to left and right, and soften the pale summit with mist,                                                             yet one perceives the massive presence, obdurate, unconcerned among those filmy guardians. (22) Heron I [p. 855 from Evening Train, 1992] (Kay) (web) St. Simon Heron, standing, standing, standing upon his offshore pillar, suddenly, subtly, dips his head to drink, three, then a fourth, and more times, that legato arabesque of the neck, the small head almost a serpent's smoothl one with its flexible stem. Body and tall legs move not an inch.                             Hunger, thirst, fulfillment are ripples that lap his surface; his patience absorbs them. Time does not pass, for him; it is the lake, and full, and still, and he has all of it, and wades to strike when he will upon his fish. (23) Heron II [p. 856 from Evening Train, 1992] (Kay) (web) Elegantly gray, the blue heron rises from perfect stillness on wide wings,                       flies a few beats       sideways                     trails his feet in the lake,       and rises again to circle from marker to marker (the posts that show where the bottom shelves downward) choosing: and lands on the floating dock where the gulls cluster— a tall prince come down from the castle to walk, proud and awkward, in the market square, while squat villagers break off their deals and look askance. (24) I Crow Spring: Uncertain Oneiromancy [pp. 915-916 from Sands of the Well, 1996] (Eavan) (web) I spent the entire night leading a blind man through an immense museum so that (by internal bridges, or tunnels? somehow!) he could avoid the streets, the most dangerous avenues, all the swift chaotic traffic . . .                     I persuaded him to allow my guidance, through to the other distant doors, though once inside, labyrinthine corridors, steps, jutting chests and chairs and stone arches bewildered him as I named them at each swerve, and were hard for me to manoeuver him around and between. As he could perceive nothing, I too saw only the obstacles, the objects with sharp corners; not one painting, not one carved credenza or limestone martyr.          We did at last emerge, however, into that part of the city he had been headed for when I took over; he raised his hat in farewell, and went on, uphill, tapping his stick. I stood looking after him, watching as the street enfolded him, wondering if he would make it, and after I woke, wondering still what in me he was, and who the I was that took the long short-cut with him through room after room of beauty his blindness hid from me as if it had never been. Eavan Boland: In 1994, I read with Yusef Komunyakaa [?] in Wales. I read this poem. [Commentary; Oneiromancy is a form of dream divination, using the dream to predict the future. Oneiromancy literature references include Jacob's Ladder (Genesis 28:10-19), one of Levertov's books by this title (1961 poem), Joseph's dreams (Genesis 37:9-11) and Penelope's dream in Homer's Odyssey (Book XIX:508-553).] Crow Spring [p. 923 from Sands of the Well, 1996] was not read. The crows are tossing themselves recklessly in the random winds of spring.                 One friend has died, one disappeared           (for now, at least) leaving no address;           I've lost the whereabout           of a wandering third. That seems to be,           this year, the nature of this season.           Is it a message about relinquishment? Across the water, rai's veil, gray silk, flattens the woods to two dimension. While close at hand the crows' black fountain jets and falls, jets and blows this way and that. How they scoop themselves up from airy nadirs! (25) Primary Wonder [p. 976 from Sands of the Well, 1996] (Kay) (web) 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.                                                           And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng's clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, O Lord, Creator, Hallowed One, You still, hour by hour sustain it. Albert J. Gelpi: This poem is about open-mouth wonder. Moving on her pilgrimage in 1984, Denise converted to Christianity. Her poems showed more acknowledgement and celebration of mystery. We'll close off our celebration of Denise Levertov with a video of her reading six poems in 1994.         Screen Shots taken from Lannan Foundation Video of Denise Levertov's 1994 Reading Six Poems (1) Settling [p. 853 from Evening Train, 1992] (Jo-Anne read this poem earlier) (web) I was welcomed here— clear gold of late summer, of opening autumn, the dawn eagle sunning himself on the highest tree, the mountain revealing herself unclouded, her snow tinted apricot as she looked west, tolerant, in her steadfastness, of the restless sun forever rising and setting.                                           Now I am given a taste of the grey foretold by all and sundry, a grey both heavy and chill. I've boasted I would not care, I'm London-born. And I won't. I'll dig in, into my days, having come here to live, not to visit. Grey is the price of neighboring with eagles, of knowing a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen. (2) Open Secret [p. 858 from Evening Train, 1992] (web) Perhaps one day I shall let myself approach the mountain— hear the streams which must flow down it, lie in a flowering meadow, even touch my hand to the snow. Perhaps not. I have no longing to do so. I have visited other mountain heights. This one is not, I think, to be known by close scrutiny, by touch of foot or hand or entire outstretched body; not by any familiarity of behavior, any acquaintance with its geology or the scarring roads humans have carved in its flanks. This mountain's power lies in the open secret of its remote apparition, silvery low-relief coming and going moonlike at the horizon always loftier, lonelier, than I ever remember. (3) Tragic Error [p. 883 from Evening Train, 1992] (web) The earth is the Lord's, we gabbled, and the fullness thereof— while we looted and pillaged, claiming indemnity: the fullness thereof given over to us, to our use— while we preened ourselves, sure of our power, wilful or ignorant, through the centuries. Miswritten, misread, that charge: subdue was the false, the misplaced word in the story. Surely we were to have been earth's mind, mirror, reflective source. Surely our task was to have been to love the earth, to dress and keep it like Eden's garden. That would have been our dominion: to be those cells of earth's body that could perceive and imagine, could bring the planet into the haven it is to be known, (as the eye blesses the hand, perceiving it form and the work it can do). (4) The Danger Moments [p. 918 from Sands of the Well, 1996] (web) Some days, some moments shiver in extreme fragility. A trembling brittleness of oak and iron. Splinterings, glassy shatterings, threaten. Evaporations of granite. These are the danger moments: different from fear of what we do, have done, may do. Different from apprehension of mortality, the closing cadence of lived phrases, a continuum. These are outside the pattern. You've heard the way infant and ancient sleepers stop sometimes between one breath and the next? You know the terror of watching them. It's like that. As if the world were a thought God was thinking and then not thinking. Divine attention turned away. Will breath and though resume?                  They do, for now. [Note: This poem seems to be erroneously assigned to Denise Duhamel and published in American Poetry Review, Volume 05, September/October 1995, where Denise Levertov also had a poem. There is a typo in the 13th line "You've hear" instead of "You've heard"]. (5) A Gift [p. 923 from Sands of the Well, 1996] (web) Just when you seem to yourself nothing but a flimsy web of questions, you are given the questions of others to hold in the emptiness of your hands, songbird eggs that can still hatch if you keep them warm, butterflies opening and closing themselves in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure their scintillant fur, their dust. You are given the questions of others as if they were answers to all you ask. Yes, perhaps this gift is your answer. Photograph by Monikagal, March 7, 2012 (6) For Those Whom the Gods Love Less [pp. 956-957 from Sands of the Well, 1996] (web) When you discover your new work travels the ground you had traversed decades ago, you wonder, panicked, 'Have I outlived my vocation? Said already all that was mine to say?'                                         There's a remedy— only one— for the paralysis seizing your throat to mute you, numbing your hands: Remember the great ones, remember Cézanne doggedly sur le motif, his mountain a tireless noonday angel he grappled like Jacob, demanding reluctant blessing. Remember James rehearsing over and over his theme, the loss of innocence and the attainment (note by separate note sounding its tone until by accretion a chord resounds) or somber understanding. Each life in art goes forth to meet dragons that rise from their bloody scales in cyclic rhythm: Know and forget, know and forget. It's not only the passion for getting it right (though it's that, too) it's the way radiant epiphanies recur, recur, consuming, pristine, unrecognized— until rememberance dismays you. And then, look, some inflection of light, some wing of shadow is other, unvoiced. You can, you must proceed. [Note: The web version of this poem had no line breaks, indentation, or italicized phrases as in the definitive edition that's corrected above.] Q & A Session: Q: What precipitated her divorce with Mitch? What happened? A (Albert Gelpi): Denise and Mitch were intense people. [They were married 48 years (1947-1995)] Mitchell Goodman remarried and died in January 1997. Denise did not remarry and died in December 1997. They had a son Nicolas who's a painter. He still lives in the Seattle house where Denise died. Q: Was Denise a Stegner Fellow? A (Eavan Boland): No. Denise came to Stanford as faculty member and taught the Stegner Fellows in poetry. Albert Gelpi thanked the audience for coming to Cubberley for the Denise Levertov Celebration. It was 9:06 pm. I caught the 9:20 pm Palm XPress at the Oval to the Train Depot for buses home.