{"id":84,"date":"2007-03-12T07:16:28","date_gmt":"2007-03-12T07:16:28","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-03-30T07:59:35","modified_gmt":"2007-03-30T13:59:35","slug":"denise-levertov-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/84","title":{"rendered":"Denise Levertov poem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Denise Levertov remains one of my favorite Christian poets (a qualifier I make reluctantly given that she is a <i>great poet,<\/i> period.). You can read a short profile of her <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poets.org\/poet.php\/prmPID\/41\">here.<\/a> Like with so many great poets whose passion, art, and vision was informed by their faith\u2014and found expression through their art\u2014characteristically there ever hardly is any mention of her deep personal faith in most references about her. Reading most of the profiles on her one would never guess she was a devout Christian.<\/p>\n<p>The following poem, suitable for the Lenten season, is from a small collection of her religious poems in <i>The Stream &#038; the Sapphire: Selected poems on religious themes<\/i> (New Directions Books: 1997). Her collections are well worth collecting and savoring. <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<%image(20070312-viadolorosa.jpg|300|410|Via crucis)%><br \/>\n<i>Salvator Mundi: Via Crucis<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Maybe He looked indeed<br \/>\nmuch as Rembrandt envisioned Him<br \/>\nin those small heads that seemed in fact<br \/>\nportraits of more than a model.<br \/>\nA dark, still young, very intelligent face,<br \/>\na sould-mirror gaze of deep understanding, unjudging.<br \/>\nThat face, in extremis, would have clenched its teeth<br \/>\nin a grimace not shown in even the great crucifixions.<br \/>\nThe burden of humanness (I begin to see) exacted from Him<br \/>\nthat He taste also the humiliation of dread,<br \/>\ncold sweat of wanting to let the whole thing go,<br \/>\nlike any mortal hero out of his depth,<br \/>\nlike anyone who has taken a step too far<br \/>\nand wants herself back.<br \/>\nThe painters, even the greatest, don&#8217;t show how,<br \/>\nin the midnight Garden,<br \/>\nor staggering uphill with even the human longing<br \/>\nto simply cease, to not be.<br \/>\nNot torture of body,<br \/>\nnot the hideous betrayals humans commit<br \/>\nnot the faithless weakness of friends, and surely<br \/>\nnot the anticipation of death (not then, in agony&#8217;s grip)<br \/>\nwas Incarnation&#8217;s heaviest weight,<br \/>\nbut this sickened desire to renege,<br \/>\nto step back from what He, Who was God,<br \/>\nhad promised Himself, and had entered<br \/>\ntime and flesh to enact.<br \/>\nSublime acceptance, to be absolute, had to have welled<br \/>\nup from those depths where purpose<br \/>\ndrifted for mortal moments.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Denise Levertov<\/p>\n<p>(art by Israel Galindo)<br \/>\nMake a good Lent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Denise Levertov remains one of my favorite Christian poets (a qualifier I make reluctantly given that she is a great poet, period.). You can read a short profile of her here. Like with so many great poets whose passion, art, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/84\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-worship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}