This essay examines Denise Levertov’s approach to the female subject
in the way it is problematized both in her poems and essays. In so
far as her commitment to a poetry deriving from experience characterizes
her approximation to language and her relationship with the outside
world, some of her poems clearly hint at a self-consciousness attained
through her literary, political and personal vision. In the wake of
the theoretical elaborations that feminist theory has engaged throughout
the last two decades, this paper intends to show to what extent
Levertov’s poetry articulates textually the pivotal notions that feminists
have addressed critically in connection with the self.
