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Article: "The art of the octopus": the maturation of Denise Levertov's political vision.(Spirit in the Poetry of Denise Levertov)
- Article from:
- Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature
- Article date:
- September 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Marquette University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Vietnam War and Denise Levertov's political activism during it bring a profound change to her poetry. In her 1971 To Stay Alive, Levertov rethinks her poetics in political terms to represent poetic creativity and meaning as products of active interrelation between individual and group. The long poem "Staying Alive," which comprises most of the volume, is a collage of newscasts, letters, conversations, diary entries, and poetic passages which reveals the public forum inspiring and receiving Levertov's poetry as she participates in protest against the war. Levertov devotes her poetry to creating concrete images for the protesters' slogan, "Revolution or death," and ...