LITR 5535: American Romanticism
Student Poetry Presentation 2005

Danny Corrigan

April 4, 2005

Denise Levertov (1923-1997), “The Jacob’s Ladder”

Denise Levertov's passion for literature started early in life. Her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, home schooled Denise and her sister and brought the works of Willa Cather, Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy in to the home. The poet's life long interest in Hasidic mysticism can be attributed to her father. Raised a Hasidic Jew, her father Paul Levertoff converted to an Anglican priest by the time Denise was born. Levertov has often recalled that during her childhood the Hasidic tales her father told her gave her a sense of marvel and wonder; she indicated that the tales fascinated her because a number of them were about dreams that gave glimpses of the sacred. She felt that her inherited propensities and the cultural environment of her family had everything to do with who she became. She became a highly respected visionary American poet.

1923 Born October 24 in Ilford, Essex, England

1928 Alleged to have decided to become a writer at the age of 5

1935 At age 12 sent poetry to T. S. Eliot; he responded with 2 pages of "excellent advice," and encouragement

1940 At age 17 her first poem was published in Poetry Quarterly

1946 Her first book The Double Image (she wrote between the ages of 17 and 21) was published and brought her recognition as one of the "New Romantics"

1947 Denise married Mitchell Goodman, an American writer (they later divorced)

1948 They moved to America and settled in New York City; introduced to Transcendentalism, the experimentalism of Ezra Pound, and especially the literature of William Carlos Williams

1956 She became a naturalized citizen of the U.S.

1959-1975 Vietnam War; Levertov lectured and wrote against the war; feminism and activism became prominent in her literature

1982-1993 Denise taught full time at Stanford University and part-time at the University of Washington; she lived in Seattle for the last decade of her life

1997 Died on December 20 of complications due to lymphoma at age 74

Denise Levertov developed a unique form of lyrical poetry, a style closely related to traditional version of English free form. Perhaps her greatest influence came after her move to America. Levertov once said that without the inspiration of William Carlos Williams, “I could not have developed from a British Romantic with an almost Victorian background to an American poet of any vitality” (qtd. in Baym 2584). With his influence, she employed free form to better express her relationship to nature and the political situations around her. She believed that there should be a balance between the author and the subject in order to attempt to explain the inexplicable. The result is straightforward poetry that is, as one critic called, literary “magical realism”

“The Jacob’s Ladder” Page 2708

Possible Romantic themes to consider: idealism, the gothic, the sublime; quest or journey motif

Levertov's poem speaks to her understanding of the fact that much does depend on the poet's, i.e., the individual’s deeds. Her Jacob's ladder/stairway is not just “a thing of gleaming strands / a radiant evanescence / for angels' feet that only glance in their tread, and need not touch the stone” (Lines 1-5) but it is of stone. The stairway has a dreamlike sense of ambiguity. Its “rosy stone” takes on “a glowing sense of softness,” but the persona “rationally” lets the reader know that this is “only because behind it the sky is a doubtful, a doubting / night gray.” (9-10). Slightly ominous, possibly “gothic imagery”? The unknown?

Then the language, the tone of the poem changes quite dramatically: “A stairway of sharp/ angles, solidly built./ One sees that the angels must spring/ down from one step to the next, giving a little/ lift of the wings:/ and a man climbing must scrape his knees, and bring the grip of his hands into play. The cut stone/ consoles his groping feet. Wings brush past him./ The poem ascends.” (11-20). Much more hopeful. There is a sense that the reward at the end of journey will be worth the effort.

Angels: static entities. Humans: dynamic, sense of movement and progression. Individual willingly choosing to go on quest. The poet considers this task a responsibility that is remarkable. The “scrap[ing]” and “groping “ are crucial for the “birthing” (“ascen[sion]”) of the poem. Humans can create art because we are the highest form or art. “The poem ascends”.

1. Can this poem be considered a Romantic poem? If so, what features designate it as such?

2. Is this a Transcendental poem? If so, how?

3. Can the “climber” in the poem be considered a romantic hero?