This Great Unknowing - Softcover

Denise Levertov

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811214583 ISBN 13: 9780811214582

Publisher: New Directions, 2000

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

From The Washington Post

Levertov died in 1997. She did not entirely organize her book, but she must certainly have been aware, being so ill that the poems she was writing would be among her "last". The book's title, taken from the poem quoted above, was certainly a felicitous choice. Throughout the book there is a sense of endings, as well as a faith that such endings lead only to other belongings. This Great Unknowing contains nothing unfamiliar to readers accustomed to Levertov's work. There is the characteristic freshness of tone (and the occasional unconquered sentimentality) and Levertov's characteristic celebration of nature, with "every prodigy of green" " wholly at odds/with the claims of reasonable gloom." There may be a "great unknowing" but there is also a certainty in the attractiveness of Levertov's poetry.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0811214583
• ISBN 13: 9780811214582
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80