Biography Essay

In her prolific, highly regarded, sometimes controversial career, Denise Levertov has created a multidimensional body of poetry that is pervaded by her strong belief in her poetic vocation and by her ideal of personal integrity. Her meticulously crafted work involves a variety of genres—nature lyrics, love poems, poems of political protest, and Christian poetry-that converge and diverge throughout her career. In book after book she explores such themes as domesticity, romantic love, the erotic, parenting and other family relations, political change, the poet's relation to artistic tradition, and aging—nearly always with reference to contemporary issues central to women. Born in England, Levertov eventually shed the neoromanticism popular in that country during World War II and, moving to the United States in 1948, embraced the experimentation of American poetry in the 1950s. The poetic communities that she joined included the Beats, the New York...