“the poet in the world” by Denise Levertov

Today I started The Poet in the World by Denise Levertov. I am likely going to go through this a bit slowly (hopefully a couple chapters each day). I’ve always been confused on the differences between what is called organic form and what is called free verse, so I want to try to spend more time thinking about it.

I found it helpful that the first two essays have follow-ups that somewhat clarify the questions I have about them.For instance, in “A Testament and a Postscript,” the “Testament” portion makes a few bold claims:

“I do not believe that a violent imitation of the horrors of our time is the concern of poetry” (3).

“I long for poems of an inner harmony in utter contrast to the chaos in which they exist” (3).

I initially read this as discouraging what might be called poetry of witness / poetry that deals with the subject matter of current atrocities. However, she clarifies in the postcript that she means harmony in form, not content:

“The poems against which I was reacting…seemed, in their formlessness, their lack of care for the language, for delving deep, for precision, to be imitating the chaos surround them” (4–5).

She also notes that at the time she wrote that introduction, “[She] was reacting with irritation to the printing of some poets’ work complete with spelling errors” (4). She criticizes the imitators of Ginsberg, though she admires “Howl” and believes it has harmony in form.

“A Testament” also makes an argument about form that also shows up in Levertov’s other writings: “I believe content determines form, and yet that content is discovered only in form” (3). She also argues against letting the artifice of form drawing attention to its self: “[Form] should never obstrude, whether from intention or carelessness, between the reader and the essential force of the poem” (3).

The next essay in the collection is her most anthologized essay, “Some notes on Organic Form.” I’ve been taught this essay before, but I want to pull out some quotes that I think help get to the heart of her argument; she also includes a piece called “A Further Definition,” which I don’t believe I’ve read before but found to be clarifying.

Levertov explains Gerard Manley Hopkins’ terms of “inscape” and “instress” as:

“Gerard Manley Hopkins invented to word ‘inscape’ to denote instrinsic form, the patter of essential characteristics both in single objects and (what is more interesting) in objects in a state of relation to each other, and the word ‘instress’ to denote the experiencing of the perception of inscape, the apperception of inscape” (7). For Levertov, Hopkins views of instrinsic forms of objects becomes important to her belief that content determines form.

Levertov goes on to explain how content creates form:

“During the writing of a poem the various elements of the poet’s being are in communion with each other, and heightened. Ear and eye, intellect and passion, interrelate more subtly than at other times…In the same way, content and form are in a state o f dynamic interaction; the understand of whether an experience is a linear sequence of a constellation raying out from and into a central focus or axis, for instance, is discoverable only in the work, not before it” (9).

One of the more specific ideas she gets into is the idea of “feeling-rhymes” corresponding to “word-rhymes,” as well as possibly “Corresponding images” creating “a kind of non-aural rhyme” (10). I really like this idea of rhyme becoming a function of feeling, and also that repetative images can have a similar effect to rhyme. Here’s another related quote:

“Rhyme, chime, echo, reiteration: they not only serve to knit elements of an experience but often are the very means, the sole means, by which the density of texture and the returning or circling of perception can be transmuted into language” (9).

To help clarify what she means by organic form, Levertov turns to how other writers and artists and writers have used it. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright said of organic architecture, “the reality of the building lies in the space within it, to be lived” (10). She also quotes Thomas Huxley as defining organic as, “almost as an equilvalent to the word ‘living’” (10–11). In other words, she is defining organic form as something that is alive, that has its own agency.

Levertov fairly controversley notes (she’s actually quoting something she said previously): “Most free verse if failed organic poetry, that is, organic poetry from which the attention of the writer had been switched off too soon, before the intrinsic form of the experience had been revealed” (11).

Levertov attempts to further clarify the difference between organic form and free verse as: “free verse isolates the ‘ rightness’ of each line or cadence — if it seems expressive…never mind the relation of it to the next; while in organic poetry the peculiar rhythms of the parts are in some degree modified, if necessary in order to discover the rhythm of the whole” (11). I admit I have always found this distinction rather murky.

The added section, “A Further Definition,” attempts to clarify the differences between free verse and organic form:

• “There is a poetry that seeks to invent, for thought and feeling and perception not experienced as form, forms to contain them; or to make appropriate re-use of existing metric form”(14). — Levertov designates this type of poetry as neither organic poetry nor free verse, but actually traditional verse; this is an interesting label because I am fairly certain my writing falls most into this category, and I would have never said I write traditional verse. I guess I have had at least three new formalist professors between my MFA and PhD, so it makes sense.
• “There is a poetry that seeks to invent, for thought and feeling and perception not experienced as form, a mode of expression that shall maintain that formlessness, avoiding the development of rhythmic and sonic patters” (14). — Levertov designates this type of poetry as free verse.
• “There is a poetry that in thought and in feeling and in perception seeks the forms peculiar to these experiences” (14). — Levertov designates this type of poetry as organic form.