Denise Levertov, who has lived in America since 1948, commands the field and the grove as far as the women poets are concerned, and is among the five best poets of the United States. In what has come to be called the New American Poetry, she is only one among the leaders and champions, but her poetry, like Robert Creeley's, is most accessible to the new or common reader, while at the same instance being in the post-Williams stream.

In addition, her work is all centered on the religious stance. She extends the idea of poetry as religion, till she says: "I believe poets are instruments on which the power of poetry plays." But she says that poets are not thus passive—they are also makers, so that poetry comes from shared activities, human with hobgoblin, mind with mystery. (p. 77)

Denise Levertov is also confronted by the nature of...