This Great Unknowing [Paperback]

Denise Levertov (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2000

When Denise Levertov died on December 20, 1997, she left behind forty finished poems, which now form her last collection, This Great Unknowing.

Few poets have possessed so great a gift or so great a body of work—when she died at 74, she had been a published poet for more than half a century. The poems themselves shine with the artistry of a writer at the height of her powers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Her last forty poems prove her a poet of astounding clarity and vision. -- Poetry Book Club / Academy of American Poets

Her poems bring joy to the ear, and, by their transcendental shimmer, inspire a spiritual hunger. -- The Bloomsbury Review, Zoe Anglesey, May/June 2000

[An] earnest examination of the natural world for hints, signs, and traces of the transcendent. -- Freric A. Brussat, spiritualityhealth.com, 15 September 2000

About the Author

Denise Levertov (1923-1997) was a British born American poet. She wrote and published 20 books of poetry, criticism, translations. She also edited several anthologies. Among her many awards and honors, she received the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Frost Medal, the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Lannan Award, a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811214583
• ISBN-13: 978-0811214582
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #67,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #14 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Anthologies
  • #15 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Single Authors > United States
  • #16 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > United States > Poetry

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent poems in a beautiful book., December 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: This Great Unknowing: Last Poems (Hardcover)

This book was my first introduction to the poems of Denise Levertov. I heard about it in an essay written by Kathleen Norris in The Christian Century. The poems are strikingly beautiful and accessible to anyone. Levertov captures our imagination with the depth of her insights and the beauty of her words--not with the obscurity of her images. I have given copies of this to no less than four friends and each of them have bought other copies of her works for themselves. Highly recommended.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mahatma Denise, January 24, 2004

By 

Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: This Great Unknowing (Paperback)

I miss Denise Levertov. I never knew her personally, but she spoke to me through her poetry in ways that few others have. I still remember how stunned I was to hear of her death--several months after the fact, in casual conversation with Deborah Larsen, a great-souled poet in her own right.

I've been rereading during these bleak but beautiful winter months Levertov's posthumous poems. To my mind, they offer some of the best work she ever did. They continue her themes of yearning for something that can't quite be uttered, her love for the particular, her striving to reach a level of awareness before which the heart of being will be revealed, and her concerns for justice and for the environment. But now there's a poignancy, a nostalgia, an anticipation--and perhaps an acceptance--to her verse that suggest a woman awaiting the end. I read her words--her sighs, really--and my soul expands just a little bit more than it would've.

One poem especially touches me--"Memory demands so much." Part of it is a fitting swansong for Levertov:

Take me flying before
you vanish, leaf, before
I have time to remember you,
intent instead on being
in the midst of that flight,
of those unforeseeable words.

Farewell, Denise. And thanks.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lovely., August 16, 2004

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: This Great Unknowing: Last Poems (Hardcover)

Denise Levertov, This Great Unknowing: Last Poems (New Directions, 1999)

I am ashamed to admit that for many years, based on some of her very early writings, I have mindlessly lumped Denise Levertov in with the Beats, specifically a number of the Beats whom I've never been able to stomach (Diane Wakoski being chief among them, with Robert Creeley and that Kelly fellow who used to publish a book every two weeks or so on Black Sparrow running a close second). It took me reading Richard Jackson's fantastic The Dismantling of Time in Contemporary Poetry a year and a half ago, in which Levertov is one of the six poets he discusses in depth, for me to consider changing that idea; by association, he puts her on the same level as such giants as Robert Penn Warren, John Hollander, and the finest living poet working in America today, Charles Simic, among others. My mind shifts gears gradually, sometimes very gradually, and I am just now getting round to giving the late Ms. Levertov another try. I'm quite glad I did, and wish I'd read The Dismantling of Time in Contemporary Poetry when it first came out some twelve years ago.

This Great Unknowing is, not surprisingly, a book overshadowed with the idea of death. Not an uncommon theme for a writer who's approaching the age of seventy-five and knows she probably isn't long for this world. The work herein is also possessed of a great maturity (something many seventy-five-year-old poets never acquire), a fine ear for tonality, and a decided calming of the radical spirit, though it has not gone away entirely. And when the radical spirit comes out, as with most poets, the work does suffer; Levertov, like almost all of her contemporaries, was never big on the art of subtlety. She has, however, over the years taken an increasing interest in letting the story tell itself, so once in a while the pokes at society do manage to find themselves enmeshed in a poem, rather than a political screed. Which puts her well ahead of most of the pack in that regard.

Her work speaks with a quiet authority here, a need for sharing rather than for imparting, and that makes all the difference;

"...In the crook
of an old and tattered snag
something gleams amid the stillness,
drawing the gaze: some bit of heartwood
so long exposed, weather and time
have polished it, as centuries
of awed lips, touching
a hand of stone, rub it
to somber gleaming."
(--"A Cryptic Sign")

or

"...(Meanwhile,
the April sun, cold though it is,
has opened the small daisies,
so many and so humble they get underfoot--
and don't care. Each one
a form of laughter.)..."
(--"Noblesse Oblige")

The few places where it does degenerate into the non-poetry of political rhetoric do cause the book to suffer, but by no means should those few spots (limited to a few lines here and there, never a whole poem) stop you from seeking this book out at your earliest opportunity. Levertov is a fine poet, and this seems an excellent starting point. I know I'll be reading more of her late work, hoping it's this good. ****