I find there’s nothing so effective for learning to read well than watching an accomplished poet read their own work. Levertov, for example, is composed, confident. She takes her time with her work, treats it with the dignity it deserves. Why shouldn’t she? She is at the end of an admirable and prolific career. Yet why shouldn’t we all read our work with the same conviction and delight? Watching this video has been great. I look forward to others in the series.

More importantly, the thing should not be rendered in a vacuum if it is to be sincere. The poet must exist, and her relationship to the object (or objects) must also exist in some form within the work. Otherwise we are talking about realism–the object rendered whole without the artist anywhere in sight. Because the relationship must exist, the tools for rendering sincerity are always in danger of slipping in to sentiment. Yet the ultimate goal of sincerity could guide the hand of the writer to steadiness. If, indeed, this were the kind of sincerity espoused by this movement.

Yet in the work I have perused so far of some poets who have taken up this badge, there is very little sense of carefulness about what is being described. So far, the only poet I have seen that approaches something uniquely sincere and also new is Joseph Massey. Others are quite the opposite–espousing a deliberate casualness, I dare say flippant, a kind of fast-talking ones way into delirium as a means of transcendence. This is itself a kind of irony, a kind of plainspoken relation to ones thoughts and senses that is deliberately fast and loose and therefore nothing like “sincere craftsmanship”. In fact, if there is any object to be carefully rendered, it is the thought. In this way, this reaction to postmodernism and post-language-poetry has failed to shake off its fundamental influences.

The beats, and the ensuing flurry of postmodernism and decentralization has had the unfortunate effect of demoting some poetry to wordplay. I have found that some of the most common criticism of poems in intermediate writers’ workshops (besides overuse of adjectives or abstract language) is that it is sentimental. Yet rarely, despite the deluge of clever but ultimately unimportant poetry being produced today, does anyone say, “yes–that’s interesting–but what’s the point? What does it meant to you and make you feel?” That such a risk is, in fact, a risk, we owe to a relatively short period of artistic agnosticism in which we currently reside; remarkably short, in fact, relative to the centuries of writers who have wholeheartedly, unabashedly and sincerely endeavored to say something that matters.

Perhaps, with the very existence of a new sincerity movement, we are seeing glimpses of the end of an age.

What is so great about this poem is its excellent rhythm. Some of this is created through alliteration, as in the lines:

They drift about the darkening city squares
[...]
fingers feeling / familiar holes
[...]
a half-contented ghost among my guest

She captures not only a flavor of shell-shocked London, but a kind of universal alienation. And she does it through a quiet, powerful voice that carries us along with its rhythms. More even than the delight of the forward thrust of alliteration, the carefully stopped lines also emphasize where words fall in their cadence. Furthermore, the ideas she momentarily dangles at the end of a line before expanding them out, like

[...] thinking: Life
has always been a counterfeit, a dream

The word Life (capitals in original) blossoms out with possibility, a kind of burst of energy at the end of a momentous downward-drifting rhythm that is instantly reframed as not hopeful, but fake–life is a “counterfeit, a dream.”

Yet the poem ends in hopefulness, ringing with an image of connectedness reflected in:

letting a tap run and the plates lie wet,
while the bright rain softly shines upon the slates,
they feel the whole of life is theirs, their music
“colour, warmth, and light:” [...]

It is a poem of reconciliation with the world, of deciding to, “take root in life, inherit love.” Fueled by keen observation of her outer and inner world, as well as rick rhythms and some sparkling images, this early work of Levertov remains, to me, a gem.

What is so great about this poet is her prolific authenticity. She had something like twenty volumes of poetry published, since shortly after the second world war through the end of the twentieth century. Her work rings with sincerity and the love of craft. Excellent rhythms, masterful line breaks–Levertov helped pioneer the free verse poem, finding in her voice and her love of words an American voice I myself can not help but find mesmeric.

Click to enlarge

Just spent some much needed time away in a truly stunningly beautiful place only six hours drive from home and to which I had actually never been to before: Yosemite. It was magnificent, and perfectly timed: we were “off-season”, away from the crowds, surrounded by incredible views of waterfalls formed by snow melting in crevasses thousands of feet above us. The only hard part was being surrounded by so many happy families, and thinking how much I would have liked James to see it all one day. I picked up a copy of Denise Levertov’s Selected Poems since discovering Talking To Grief was in it, and she is fast becoming one of my favorite poets. We didn’t actually get a chance to sit around and read in Yosemite, though we happened on plenty of people doing it at the beautiful historic Ahwanee hotel in their great lounge beside a roaring fire one rainy afternoon. Well, maybe next time.