Sands of the Well [Hardcover]

Denise Levertov (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1996

For the first time in paperback-Levertov's recent poetry, showing her at the height of her literary powers. Sands of the Well, first published in hardcover in 1996, shows the poet at the height of her considerable powers, as she addresses the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest coastal landscape in terms of music, memory, aging, doubt, and faith.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her 21st collection, septuagenarian Levertov (Evening Train; Oblique Prayers) continues to find God in the natural world and in "human passions, cruelties, dreams, concepts, crimes, and the exercise of virtue." Nature, however, is what puts all of the latter in perspective and allows us to realize the divine. At their best, these poems, in the imagist tradition, transport a reader into the rendered scenes, the lines becoming like "oarstrokes over/ the waveless, dark,/ secretive water." While the last of the eight sections, "Close to a Lake," offers a heady brew of old and new testament faith, it is Levertov's more searching, personal reflections that ring truest: "...I lay low, evasive,/ imagining mortal weariness it's not yet time for." One feels, throughout, that the spirituality is in our own hands: "...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..../ You are given the questions of others/ as if they were answers/ to all you ask."
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Many of these poems exist to reiterate, with calm assurance, the poet's faith in a force greater than herself: "Lord, I curl in Thy grey/ gossamer hammock/ that swings by one/ elastic thread to thin/ twigs that could, that should/ break but don't." The author of over 20 volumes of verse and prose, she is admirably successful in continuing to produce poems despite her professed moral and spiritual difficulties with the endeavor: "The yellow tulip in the room's warmth opens./ Can I say it and not seem to taunt/ all who live in torment?" Levertov, who is both Jewish and Christian, English and American, and who has been influenced by Eastern religion and the "open-form" aesthetics of the Black Mountain artists, is capable of a wide range of tones, the most formal of which is often the most moving: "For the first time, the certainty of return/ to this imprinted scene . . . / cannot be assumed." Recommended for all poetry collections.?Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 136 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation (April 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811213161
• ISBN-13: 978-0811213165
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,214,125 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Levertov's SANDS OF TIME Moves Us Gently toward Last Words, January 14, 1998

By 

Larry R. Smith "Midwest Reviewer" (Huron, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sands of the Well (Hardcover)

In this collection of Denise Levertov's last poems (1923-1996) we have a fine music moving us with her through commitment and conscience to an act of faith. That faith is in the God she came to connect with during her last years living in Seattle. To know that God, you must read the book and the countless poems of honest and delicate expression bonding us with Nature and humanity. In poem after poem she moves us through and beyond our daily details to a deep awareness of the transparent wonder of being alive. In the eight sections of the book, she captures in intricate detail and clear voice the movement of her life at its close. Her opening poem "What Harbinger?" hints at her own awareness of death's approach; and the final poem "Primary Wonder" answers with a brave acceptance. These are poems as "last words," reminding us of the beauty of our days and the wonder of language to record them. Levertov is America's poet of engagement and wonder.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars reading only words, December 26, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Sands of the Well (Paperback)

The title "Sands of the Well" may suggest that Ms. Levertov's labor was like eking out words but in them there are a collage from newspaper clippings, a love poem for former lovers and the time she's spent simply writing words.