Guide to the Denise Levertov papers from the estate of Mitchell Goodman
M1140
Finding aid prepared by Tim Noakes
Dept. of Special Collections & University Archives
Stanford University Libraries
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford, California, 94305-6064
Repository Email: specialcollections@stanford.edu
March 17, 2012
Title: Denise Levertov papers from the estate of Mitchell Goodman
Identifier/Call Number: M1140
Contributing Institution:
Dept. of Special Collections & University Archives
Language of Material:
English
Physical Description:
3.5 Linear feet
6 manuscript boxes; 1 1/2 manuscript box
Date (inclusive): circa 1952-1985
Physical Location: Special Collections and University Archives materials are stored offsite and must be paged 36-48 hours in advance. For more
information on paging collections, see the department's website: http://library.stanford.edu/depts/spc/spc.html.
Abstract: This collection contains personal and family correspondence, poetry and prose writings, and journals and notebooks from Denise
Levertov.
Creator:
Levertov, Denise, 1923-1997
Scope and Contents
The Denise Levertov papers from the estate of Mitchell Goodman are divided into 4 separate series. Series 1 constitutes personal
correspondence; Series 2, family correspondence; Series 3, Poetry/Prose/Lecture drafts and notes; Series 4, ephemera.
Biographical
Levertov, Denise (24 Oct. 1923 - 20 Dec. 1997), poet, was born in Ilford, Essex, England, to Paul Levertoff and Beatrice Spooner-Jones
Levertoff; as an adult she reverted to the traditional spelling of her surname. Her father was a Russian Jew who had converted
to Christianity in the late nineteenth century, ultimately becoming an Anglican priest. He traced his ancestry back to the
founder of a mystical Hasidic sect that had flourished in Russia in the eighteenth century. Denise Levertov's mother was descended
from a well-known Welsh mystic named Angel Jones. Levertov grew up feeling what she later described as "a sense of wonder"
at the marvel of creation from the teachings of both of her parents, and although she was not conventionally religious as
an adult, her upbringing was undoubtedly the source of a mystical strain underlying much of her poetry.
Levertov, along with her older sister, Olga, was educated at home and never attended school. For "instruction" her mother
read aloud to the family daily from works by Dickens, Tolstoy, Conrad, and other great writers. Denise and her sister were
encouraged to read widely themselves in the large family library, which included not only classical standards and scholarly
books on a number of subjects but also many volumes of poetry. Their father was also a biblical scholar who was fluent in
a number of languages, translated several Hebrew classics into English, and wrote a life of St. Paul. As a child Denise studied
painting and ballet, and she began to write poetry. At the age of twelve she sent some of her poems to T. S. Eliot, who responded
with an encouraging letter of advice, and by her early teens she had decided to become a poet.
Following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Levertov trained as a nurse at St. Luke's Hospital in London and remained
there for the duration of the conflict. Her wartime experiences, including the eight months in 1940-1941 when the city was
under continual aerial bombardment from the Nazis, undoubtedly contributed to the strong antiwar stance that she was to take
two decades later. Throughout the war years she wrote verse, some of which was published in local journals, and her first
book of poetry,
The Double Image, appeared in 1946. After the war ended in 1945, Levertov worked in an antiques store and a bookstore, then went to Europe,
supporting herself by working at a hospital in Paris and teaching English in the Netherlands and in Geneva, Switzerland. There
she met a young American writer, Mitchell Goodman, and the two were married in December 1947. They lived in Paris and Florence
for several months then moved to New York in 1948; their son was born the following year, and she was naturalized in 1955.
Levertov had continued to write poetry during the postwar years, and her career was given an unexpected boost after some of
her earlier verses were read by the American poet Kenneth Rexroth. Although he felt that both their neoromantic sentiments
and their carefully rhymed and formally metered structure were old-fashioned, he believed that Levertov was a promising new
writer, and he included some of her work in his anthology New British Poets (1949). Even more significant was her introduction
to the poet Robert Creeley, a friend of her husband's who went on to teach at the celebrated Black Mountain College, an experimental
school in Asheville, North Carolina. Creeley, along with the so-called Black Mountain Poets--including Charles Olson, Robert
Duncan, and Edward Dorn--with whom he became allied, called for a new "projective," open verse that would supplant traditional
"closed" poetry. They believed that most poetry from the recent past was centered in the poet's ego and expressed personal
sentiments in arbitrarily constructed lines of constricted language: in a word, it sounded "affected" to contemporary ears.
Projective verse, on the other hand, focused on nature and voiced the normal rhythms of human speech and breath. Among modern
poets, the projectivists most admired William Carlos Williams, in whose verse could be heard the voices of ordinary people.
Levertov was impressed by Creeley's notions of poetry, and the verse that she now wrote reflected his influence, as well as
that of Williams and another American poet, Wallace Stevens. Earlier she had claimed to be most inspired by the work of Gerard
Manley Hopkins, Rainier Maria Rilke, and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle); now Williams and Stevens, and their distinctly American idiom,
joined her pantheon. When Creeley moved on to become a member of the faculty at Black Mountain, Levertov began contributing
poems to his new journal, the
Black Mountain Review. Her second collection of verse,
Here and Now (1957), represented a major departure from the style of her first.
Although
Here and Now was published by the Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti as part of his Pocket Poets series, Levertov claimed then and afterward
that while admiring some of the work of Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and several other Beats, she never considered herself
one of their number. She strove, she said, for poems with an "inner harmony in utter contrast to the chaos in which [many
of the works of the Beats] exist." Poetry, she later noted, had a social function only to the extent that it should "awaken
sleepers" rather than giving them violent shocks. Among the many admirers of her second book was Kenneth Rexroth, who later
noted how pleased he was to see her move away from the sentimental "lassitude" of her earlier work.
Levertov published several more volumes in succession during the 1950s:
Overland to the Islands (1958);
Five Poems (1958); and
With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (1959). In these, as well as in
Here and Now, she employed free verse to write about ordinary events in life and nature and the pleasure taken in their observation, leaving
behind her early mannered style and announcing the birth of her true voice as a poet. Her next volumes,
Jacob's Ladder (1961) and
O Taste and See (1964), continued in this vein, conveying a delight in natural images and revealing the mystical strain that would become
evident in most of her subsequent verse.
Levertov wrote several essays about her mature art, among them "Statement on Poetics" (1959), in which she made the paradoxical
observation that while content determined form, "content is discovered only in form." Poets were seers, she wrote, conscious
of the layered meaning of that word, and a poet had a "responsibility to communicate what he sees" so that "they who cannot
see may see." Her 1965 essay, "Some Notes on Organic Form," which first appeared in
Poetry magazine and has been widely anthologized, hazarded an explanation of how a poem came to be written: the poet, she said,
had to have an experience so intense that it had to be "brought to speech."
By the early 1960s other critics besides Rexroth were applauding Levertov's poetry, though there were some dissenters who
felt that she was following too consciously in the vein of the Black Mountain poets and lacked originality. Her critical and
popular audience became increasingly polarized by the end of the decade as Levertov became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam
War. First drawn into opposition when the war escalated in 1965, she led the formation that year of the "Writers' and Artists'
Protest against the War in Vietnam." For nearly a decade, until the last American forces were withdrawn in 1973, she was a
leader of the antiwar movement, giving speeches and writing articles, some of which were included in her essay collection
The Poet in the World (1973). A volume of her poetry,
The Sorrow Dance (1967), decried the conflict while also mourning the death of her sister. In addition she visited Hanoi with an American
antiwar delegation in 1972, a year that also saw the breakup of her marriage.
Levertov's collection
The Freeing of the Dust (1975) included not only antiwar poems but also confessional verse in which she wrote about her present life and loneliness
and narrated a spiritual journey that reflected the strong influence of Jungian psychology on her thinking. Levertov expanded
on this theme in poems that she wrote during the final two decades of her life, by which time she had secured her status as
an important American poet of the twentieth century. She published nearly a dozen volumes of verse during this period, including
Candles in Babylon (1982) and the critically acclaimed
Breathing the Water (1987), as well as two collections of prose:
Light Up the Cave (1981) and
New & Selected Essays (1992). Levertov's last book of poetry was
Sands of the Well, published in 1996. In the course of her long career she also published translations of Bengali, Bulgarian, and French prose
and verse and served as poetry editor of two prominent leftist periodicals,
The Nation (1961-1963) and
Mother Jones (1975-1978).
Levertov died in Seattle, Washington, of complications from lymphoma.
Citation: Ann T. Keene. "Levertov, Denise"; http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-03376.html; American National Biography Online
June 2000 Update. Access Date: Tue May 15 15:34:14 PDT 2012
Access to Collection
The materials are open for research use.
Publication Rights
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the
Head of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California 94305-6064. Consent
is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission
from the copyright owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner, heir(s) or assigns. See: http://library.stanford.edu/depts/spc/pubserv/permissions.html.
Restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted to research
and educational purposes.
Acquisition Information
This collection was purchased by Stanford University, Special Collections in 1999 and 2005.
Preferred Citation
[identification of item], Denise Levertov papers from the estate of Mitchell Goodman (M1140). Dept. of Special Collections
and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Processing Information note
Processed by Tim Noakes.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Abbey, Edward, 1927-
Brand, Millen
Carruth, Hayden
Cousins, Norman.
Creeley, Robert, 1926-2005
Goodman, Mitch
Goodman, Nikolai
Goodman, Paul
Gregor, Sandra
Hamady, Walter
Jarrett, Emmett
Kinnell, Galway, 1927-
Kissinger, Henry
Kresch, Al
Leontief, Adelle Wassily
Levertov, Beatrice Adelaide
Levertov, Paul
Loewinsohn, Ron
Mailer, Norman
Martin, John
New Directions.
Paley, Grace.
Rich, Adrienne Cecile
Roethke, Theodore , 1908-1963
Rukeyser, Muriel
Schrieber, Ron
Sorrentino, Gilbert
Sweeney, Jack
Trien, Eve
Wendell Berry
Willard, Nancy
Williams, Flossie
Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963
Wolpe, Hilda
American poetry
Series 1. Personal Correspondence
Scope and Contents
Personal Correspondence contains primarily correspondence from close friends and notable individuals, mostly written from
1965-1967. Correspondents include William Carlos Williams, Henry Kissinger, Robert Creeley, and others.
Box 1, Folder 1
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1956-1979
Box 1, Folder 2
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1960-1968
Box 1, Folder 3
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1964-1968
Box 1, Folder 4
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1965-1967
Box 1, Folder 5
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1965-1967
Box 1, Folder 6
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1965-1967
Box 1, Folder 7
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1965-1967
Box 1, Folder 8
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1965-1967
Box 1, Folder 9
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1965-1967
Box 1, Folder 10
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1965-1967
Box 1, Folder 11
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1965-1967
Box 2, Folder 1
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1965-1967
Box 2, Folder 2
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1965-1968
Box 2, Folder 3
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, 1966-1967
Box 2, Folder 4
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, ca. 1967
Box 2, Folder 5
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, ca. 1967
Box 2, Folder 6
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, ca. 1967
Box 2, Folder 7
Denise Levertov: incoming personal correspondence, ca. 1967
Box 2, Folder 8
Denise Levertov: outgoing personal correspondence, drafts, notes, etc.
Box 2, Folder 9
Denise Levertov: miscellaneous outgoing postcards, 1980-1986
Box 4, Folder 9
Janie [ ? ] to Denise Levertov, 1965-1967
Box 4, Folder 12
Edward Abbey to Denise Levertov, 7/4/1966
Box 4, Folder 13
Wendell Berry to Denise Levertov, 1967
Box 4, Folder 14
Millen Brand to Denise Levertov, 1966-1968
Box 4, Folder 15
Hayden Carruth to Denise Levertov and Mitch Goodman, 1965-1986
Box 7, Folder 1
Hayden Carruth to Denise Levertov, 9/16/1968 with Jim Cunningham poems
Box 4, Folder 16
Norman Cousins to Denise Levertov, 1968
Box 4, Folder 17
Robert Creeley to Denise Levertov, 1962-1990
Box 4, Folder 18
Paul Goodman to Denise Levertov, 1967
Box 4, Folder 19
Walter Hamady to Mitch Goodman, 1968
Box 4, Folder 20
Emmett Jarrett to Denise Levertov, 1965-1967
Box 4, Folder 21
Galway Kinnell to Denise Levertov and Mitch Goodman, ca. 1965-1968
Box 4, Folder 22
Henry Kissinger to Denise Levertov, 5/9/1968
Box 4, Folder 23
Al Kresch to Denise Levertov, n.d.
Box 4, Folder 24
Adelle Wassily Leontief to Denise Levertov and Mitch Goodman, n.d.
Box 5, Folder 1
Ron Loewinsohn to Denise Levertov and Mitch Goodman, 1966-1967
Box 5, Folder 2
Norman Mailer to Mitch Goodman, 1984
Box 5, Folder 3
John Martin to Denise Levertov, 1967
Box 5, Folder 4
New Directions to Denise Levertov, 1965-1967
Box 5, Folder 5
Grace Paley to Mitch Goodman, 1986
Box 5, Folder 6
Adrienne Rich to Denise Levertov, 1966
Box 5, Folder 7
Ted Roethke to Denise Levertov, 1961
Box 5, Folder 8
Muriel Rukeyser to Mitch Goodman and Denise Levertov, 1987 and undated
Box 5, Folder 9
Ron Schreiber to Denise Levertov, 1967
Box 5, Folder 10
Gil Sorrentino to Denise Levertov, 1965-1966
Box 5, Folder 11
Jack Sweeney to Denise Levertov, 1962-1963
Box 5, Folder 12
Eve Trien to Denise Levertov, ca. 1966-1967
Box 7, Folder 3
Nancy Willard to Denise Levertov (includes "A Wake for the Wild Horses")
Box 5, Folder 13
Flossie Williams to Denise Levertov, 1967
Box 5, Folder 14
William Carlos Williams to Mitch Goodman, 10/22/1958
Box 5, Folder 15
Hilda Wolpe to Denise Levertov, n.d.
Box 4, Folder 11
Correspondence: booksellers and libraries, 1984
Series 2. Family Correspondence
Scope and Contents
This series contains correspondence between Denise Levertov, Mitch Goodman (her ex-husband), and Nikolai Goodman (Denise and
Mitch's only son). There are also a few early letters from Denise to her parents, Paul and Beatrice Levertov.
Box 2, Folder 10
Early Denise Levertov letters to parents, ca. 1950-1958
Box 2, Folder 11
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1953-1981
Box 2, Folder 12
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1955-1985
Box 2, Folder 13
Denise Levertov: incoming/outgoing family correspondence, 1956-1986
Box 3, Folder 1
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1956-1986
Box 3, Folder 2
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1964-1992
Box 3, Folder 3
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1965-1987
Box 3, Folder 4
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1965-1989
Box 3, Folder 5
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1968-1986
Box 3, Folder 6
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1974-1986
Box 3, Folder 7
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1974-1991
Box 3, Folder 8
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1974-1996
Box 3, Folder 9
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1975-1981
Box 3, Folder 10
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1975-1984
Box 3, Folder 11
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1976-1983
Box 3, Folder 12
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1976-1984
Box 4, Folder 1
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1976-1985
Box 4, Folder 2
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1977-1995
Box 4, Folder 3
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1979-1980
Box 4, Folder 4
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1981-1983
Box 4, Folder 5
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1987-1991
Box 4, Folder 6
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1988-1991
Box 4, Folder 7
Denise Levertov: outgoing family correspondence to Mitch and Nikolai Goodman, 1989-1992
Box 4, Folder 8
Denise Levertov's "last letter to Mitch, hand carried by Nikolai from Seattle," [1996]
Box 4, Folder 10
Mitch Goodman: incoming correspondence, 1945-1973
Box 4, Folder 25
Olga Levertoff to Denise Levertov, ca. March 30, 1962
Box 7, Folder 5
Olga Levertoff to Denise Levertov, ca. 1962-1964
Box 4, Folder 26
Denise Levertoff to Olga Levertoff, 6/18/1962
Series 3. Poetry/Prose/Lecture drafts and notes
Scope and Contents
This series contains drafts of Levertov's poems and prose works. Along with these drafts, this series includes many lecture
notes used for her poetry class.
Box 5, Folder 16
Olga poems, AMs (1st draft)
Box 5, Folder 18
Olga poems/Jacob's Ladder: AMs
Box 5, Folder 19
"A Tree Telling of Orpheus," "To go by the Asters and breathe," AMs's
Box 5, Folder 24
Poetry: drafts (with correspondence to Mitch Goodman)
Box 5, Folder 25
Poetry: drafts (photocopies)
Box 5, Folder 28
TMs: "Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus"
Box 5, Folder 29
Prose writing: "The Truth and Life of Myth in Poetry"
Box 5, Folder 30
Prose writing: "For Four years of the War I was a nurse..."
Box 5, Folder 31
Lecture: "Poetry and Crisis," Vassar College, March 1967
Box 5, Folder 32
Lectures on poetry: notes
Box 5, Folder 33
Lectures on poetry: notes
Box 5, Folder 34
Lectures on poetry: notes
Box 5, Folder 35
Notes and correspondence re. "Myth in Literature and Religion"
Box 6, Folder 1
Levertov autobiography: "One Summer Evening"
Box 6, Folder 3
Levertov corrections for unknown Sandy Gregor manuscript
Box 6, Folder 4
Levertov corrections: unknown poets
Box 7, Folder 4
"Tajimara," Levertov translation of Juan Garcia Ponce
Series 4. Personal Ephemera
Scope and Contents
Personal ephmera contains Levertov's diary, notebooks, broadsides, annual calendars, miscellaneous articles, contracts, and
photographs.
Box 6, Folder 6
Denise Levertov Diary, ca. 1957
Box 6, Folder 7
Levertov notebook, re. Castle poems, ca. 1971
Box 6, Folder 8
Publications/Broadsides: "A Marigold from North Viet Nam," "Conversations in Moscow"
Box 6, Folder 9
"The Truth and Life of Myth in Poetry," by Robert Duncan (photocopy)
Box 6, Folder 10
Robert Duncan: Levertov speech and notes.
Box 6, Folder 11
Miscellaneous artwork (artist unknown)
Box 6, Folder 13
Levertov ephemera: 1956 passport
Box 6, Folder 17
Miscellaneous articles, broadsides, documents
Box 6, Folder 18
Mademoiselle Magazine, 1958: "Two poems by Denise Levertov"
Box 6, Folder 19
Levertov "Year Book," undated
Box 6, Folder 20
Denise Levertov notebook, ca. 1967
Box 6, Folder 21
Mitch Goodman, financial documents, 1952
Box 7, Folder 2
Levertov: "Statement of Plans," 1961/1962
Box 7, Folder 8
Miscellaneous documents/broadsides
Box 7, Folder 9
New Directions publishing contracts