In every time there are just a few poets whose work–for its sheer lyric conscience–carries poetry safely into the future. Denise Levertov, as this book shows, is one of them.

Levertov’s mastery–more than mastery because she is one of the originators–of contemporary poetic form, informed with a fierce, generous intelligence, can be frightening.

Denise Levertov has evolved a style of her own, clear, sparse, immediate and vibrant with a very special sensibility and completely feminine insight. She is the most subtly skillful poet of her generation, the most profound, the most modest, the most moving.