“… the life of steadfast attention.”

Though born a Jew in Russia, whose grandfather was a distinguished Hasidic rabbi, Paul Levertoff was ordained as an Anglican priest in London in 1922. His daughter, Denise Levertov (1923-1997), grew up greatly influenced by his strong intellectually inquiring mind and ethic for social reform.  Moving to live in America as a young married woman in 1948, Levertov’s poetry never lost this anchor in her Jewish Christian heritage despite her long period of ‘regretful scepticism’ until her slow Christian conversion in the 1980s. 

Levertov was a poet who lived with doors open, attentive and steadfast in her path of both witness and in being engaged with the contemporary issues of her day. Thinkers such as Martin Buber helped her see the necessity of constant dialogue in relationship with others and with God. Poets such as William Carlos Williams clarified the need for language to be integral and concerned with the immediate. Spiritual friends like Murray Bodo OFM, helped her understand the bridge between her poetry and her faith. It was gradually in her own solitary journey that she came back to faith and spoke of poetry as work that ‘enfaiths.’

How do we tread that very difficult and often fraught path of communicating what is essentially unknowable but experienced? The path of being a watcher, yet passionately engaged and alive in the world? An understanding of God as transcendent, Incarnational and Spirit of energy renewing creation? These are questions I ask in my own life, and when I revisit the poetry of Denise Levertov she opens the doors of my own imagination and her words drop down some helpful clues. 

Carol O’Connor works at St Peter’s Bookroom Anglican bookshop at St Peter’s Eastern Hill Melbourne. She is a writer, retreat conductor, has a background in Classical Studies and a Masters in English Literature.