Levertov, Denise - Kenneth Rexroth (essay date 1957)
Kenneth Rexroth (essay date 1957)
SOURCE: "Denise Levertov," in Assays, New Directions, 1961, pp. 231-35.
[Rexroth was an influential American poet, critic, editor, and translator, who was active in the San Francisco-based literary revival of the 1940s and 1950s. With the following review, originally published in Poetry in November, 1957, Rexroth became an early proponent of the work Levertov produced after coming to the United States, finding it superior to the poetry of most of her contemporaries.]
In my opinion Denise Levertov is incomparably the best poet of what is getting to be known as the new avantgarde. This may sound to some, committed to the gospel of the professor poets—the first commandment of whose decalogue of reaction is: "The age of experiment is over"—like saying that she is very much better than her associates, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Cid Corman, Chris Berjknes, Gil Orlovitz and others...
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