Levertov On Organic Form

  

For me, back of the idea of organic form is the concept that there is a form in all things (and in our experience) which the poet can discover and reveal...A partial definition, then, of organic poetry might be that it is a method of apperception, i.e., of recognizing what we per­ceive, and is based on an intuition of an order, a form beyond forms, in which forms partake, and of which man’s creative works are analogies, resemblances, natural allegories. Such po­etry is exploratory...The condition of being a poet is that periodically such a cross section, or constellation, of experiences (in which one or another element may predominate) demands, or wakes in him this demand: the poem. The beginning of the fulfillment of this demand is to contemplate, to meditate; words which connote a state in which the heat of feeling warms the intellect. To contemplate comes from “templum, temple, a place, a space for observation, marked out by the augur.” It means, not simply to observe, to regard, but to do these things in the presence of a god. And to meditate is “to keep the mind in a state of contemplation”; its synonym is “to muse,” and to muse comes from a word mean­ing “to stand with open mouth”—not so comical if we think of “inspiration”—to breathe in.
    So—as the poet stands open-mouthed in the temple of life, contemplating his experience, there come to him the first words of the poem: the words which are to be his way in to the poem, if there is to be a poem.
                                                   (from 'Some Notes On Organic Form' 1965)

New Review

   Great to receive the new PN Review last week after a bit of a lapse on my part. Among new poems by John Ashbery and fascinating essays on Elizabeth Bishop, John Clare and Edwin Muir, my brief review of Peter Riley's superb collection The Glacial Stairway may be found. There are also two pages of striking photos of 20thC American poets such as HD, Denise Levertov and WC Williams.
   But the stand-out for me is the poem The January Man by Beverly Nadin, a sort of 'broken Britain' post-pastoral written with remarkable conviction and vigour.