Who Is Water By Denise Levertov

Bouchikhi
Camil
“Denise Levertov and Water”
Denise Levertov was born was born in 1923 in Ilford, United Kingdom, part Welsh, English, German and Jewish. She played Piano, studied Literature and French and at the same time “[sold] the Daily Worker house-to-house in the working class streets of Ilford Lane”1. Her mother came from a mining village and her father was a professor. She traveled and studied literature all over Europe, analyzing classic French literature as well as German texts. After publishing her first book The Double Image, she moved to the United States and was naturalized citizen of the United-States. Her life in America affected her writing as she abandoned her traditional academic style for a postmodernist one influenced
While the earthchildren prefer being away from their mother when they play, the waterchildren enjoy their mother’s company. They are not to be seen any more as an illusion alcohol creates, but as the companions she has gained in the first end of the poem: the dragonflies. They are now “spindle thin”1 because they are dragonflies, and not because they do not eat enough food. The waterwoman still has enough energy at the end of the day, not having to cope with agitated children, and is free to go dancing in town while the earthwoman is too tired to enjoy life.
In this poem, Denise Levertov criticizes our preconception of wealth being better than poverty. She defies this principle by showing how children in wealthy families often behave like disrespectful brats. In opposition, children from humble families are often mature, respectful and close to their parents.
This poem is also a message to young women. Denise Levertov admonishes them of the prison that housewife life can be with the earthwoman’s tiring
The first verse summons this image of the white, immaculate clothing hanging in the sun here invoked by the lemon tree representative of sunny regions. Then, an enjambment leads quickly the reader to “in the rain”, disturbing completely the vision he had from the scene. Some of the “washing hanging from the lemon tree” also touches “the grass long and coarse”. The description of the coarse grass creates an atmosphere of discomfort. She continues playing with destructive figures in the second stanza. She repeats two times broken in the same short sentence “Sequence broken, tension/ of sunlight broken”. She “breaks” at the same time sunlight from the sentence and then breaks it again in two playing with it, transforming “sunlight” into “So light”. She emphasizes this .The rain appears as a disturbing and destructive force, like in “A silence”.
Despite this negative presentation of rain, the speaker is enthralled by it. The use of “So”, “light” and the space in between “So light a rain” and “fine shreds” make it positive, beautiful and ecstatic. “fine” and “pending” are moderate and suave words that serve to describe the positive evolution of the rain. However, this calm atmosphere turns into a storm all too soon in the next