Evening Train

In the title poem of this collection, Denise Levertov again demonstrates the arresting imagery that has characterized her poetic career. Our unchanging perception of self, she writes, is "the dimension / that moves with us but itself keeps still / like the bubble in a carpenter's level." The image does a lot of poetic work for her, suggesting the way the self is constructed, with hidden flaws, faintly remembered blueprints, and room for repairs and revisions. A number of these poems bring to mind Eliot's old term "objective correlative," and rewards the reader's attention with hypnotic language. Here is a longtime favorite at top form.
--This text refers to the






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