For friends in town over Thanksgiving holiday, join us on Sunday 25 November for a potluck supper and my sharing on Denise Levertov—British-born American, activist, disturber of the peace, whose poetry from the 1960s to 90s–may still speak to us today.
For more information on Levertov, go here.
Dinner begins at 6:00
Sharing begins at 6.45
At 4514 Chouteau Avenue
Forest Park Southeast (63110)
Writing in the Dark
Denise Levertov
It’s not difficult.
Anyway, it’s necessary.
Wait until morning, and you’ll forget.
And who knows if morning will come.
Fumble for the light,
and you’ll be
stark awake, but the vision
will be fading, slipping
out of reach.
You must have paper at hand,
a felt-tip pen, ballpoints don’t always flow,
pencil points tend to break. There’s nothing
shameful in that much prudence: those are our tools.
Never mind about crossing your t’s, dotting your i’s–
but take care not to cover
one word with the next. Practice will reveal
how one hand instinctively comes to the aid of the other
to keep each line
clear of the next.
Keep writing in the dark:
a record of the night, or
words that pulled you from the depths of unknowing,
words that flew through your mind, strange birds
crying their urgency with human voices,
or opened
as flowers of a tree that blooms
only once in a lifetime:
words that may have the power
to make the sun rise again.
