The Life Around Us: Selected Poems on NatureAs Denise Levertov comments in her brief foreword to The Life Around Us, she has "shared with most poets in every time and place an ardent love of what my eyes and other senses revealed to me in the world we call nature. Yet in this selection of sixty-two poems chosen by the author "celebration and fear of loss are necessarily conjoined." The Life Around Us shows us both the eternal renewal of the natural world and its imperilment: "In these last few decades of the 20th century it has become ever clearer to all thinking people that although we humans are a part of nature ourselves, we have become, in multifarious ways, an increasingly destructive element within it, shaking and breaking 'the great web'--perhaps irremediably." |
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Almost-Island ancient Animal Presence armadillo autumn bark bitter bough braids Brother Ivy Cabbage Field cold constellation Creature to Creature crescendo dark day's deep Denise Levertov dusk dusty float Flying High Forest Altar fullness thereof gaze geese gleam globe gold green grey heron high clouds hold their breath horizon human I-Thou Indian Summer knew lake leaf League on league leaves lettuce lichen light light's fading llama look love the earth lump Midsummer Eve milky Mirage moon Mountain Assailed Nature night Open Secret outstretched pale palest blue Palmtree paradise Parallel World passion Pentimento perceived poems praise rain Receives from Living river rock Sapphire serene shadow shallow shore silence Silent Spring silver-white sky's slowly smog smoky snow are melting stands naked stream Stricken Children sunlight train transparent trees Unceasing Sound underlayer vast veils visible Vron Woods wants to live Whisper