Themes

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Themes
Themes and Meanings (Critical Guide to Poetry for
Students)
The poem’s two primary themes are expressed immediately: the simultaneous longing for total
communication and the knowledge that such communication is probably not possible. Love and marriage
have been subjects for poets throughout the centuries, so Levertov is certainly not tackling a new subject. Yet
she breaks from tradition by presenting her themes from both a twentieth century and a timeless perspective.

Levertov is often discussed as a feminist poet, but her reflections on love, marriage, and even divorce are
never occasions for “male bashing.” Rather, she suggests that both men and women have difficulty in
functioning wholly either within or outside marriage. In “Divorcing” she writes, “We were Siamese twins,/
Our blood’s not sure/ it can circulate,/ now we are cut apart.” In the poems in O Taste and See she presents a
realistic rather than a romantic picture of love and marriage. Twentieth century works (with the exception of
romance novels) do not romanticize love and marriage with a “happily ever after” conclusion. They are
honest in their sometimes puzzling conclusions. Levertov, like other modern poets, leaves the reader feeling
both hope and despair.

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Analysis

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Analysis
The Poem (Critical Guide to Poetry for Students)
“The Ache of Marriage” is part of a Denise Levertov collection entitled O Taste and See: New Poems. In the
title poem and others in the collection, Levertov moves outward from the sensual and immediate to the wider
implications of actions or concepts. The poems are filled with rich physical detail, which the poet uses in this
particular poem to present the essential qualities of a marriage. Levertov had written about marriage in earlier
poems such as “The Marriage, I” and “The Marriage, II” (in her 1958 and 1960 collections), but those love
poems are somewhat more conventional and romantic than her work in O Taste and See. In this collection she
achieves a new sense of immediacy, coupling personal experience with myth. These qualities are evident in
such poems as “Abel’s Bride” and “Divorcing” as well as in “The Ache of Marriage.” In O Taste and See
Levertov seems to have found her personal poetic voice.

“The Ache of Marriage” is a short poem in free verse, its thirteen lines divided into irregular stanzas of one,
three, three, three, and two lines. The title, which is repeated as the first line, establishes the essential conflict
and dilemma of the poem: the yearning for a total communion within marriage that is probably not attainable.
The poem uses the first-person-plural point of view, suggesting that both the man and the woman are
searching for joy but are finding that joy tempered with sadness. As is true in most lyric poetry, there is no
noticeable distinction made between the author and the speaker (part of the “we”).

The poem employs a series of sensual images to convey both joy and pain: thigh, tongue, throbbing teeth, the
belly of the leviathan, and the ark. The images progress from the highly personal to the archetypal and
biblical—moving from the familiar and sensual to the universal. The speakers (the partners in the marriage) are
expressing the aching quality of a marriage through the senses rather than through spoken words of love.

The last image of the poem is the ark, with the two marriage partners aboard—safe and removed from the
outside world yet not happy. The phrase “The ache of it” echoes the first line and concludes the poem,
leaving both the speakers and the reader unsatisfied with the knowledge that marriage continues to embody
both joy and pain and probably does not allow total communion.

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Forms and Devices (Critical Guide to Poetry for Students)
Born and reared in England, Levertov moved to the United States after World War II as the bride of an
American soldier. Her work was much influenced by American poets, especially William Carlos Williams,
Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan. Added to her traditional British poetic experience, the American
influence encouraged Levertov to adopt innovative forms.

The poetic devices most important to the poem in achieving both immediacy and voice are the seemingly
unstructured free-verse form, the heavy use of sensual imagery, and the use of biblical myth. Levertov used
what could be called organic form in “The Ache of Marriage.” As she has indicated in interviews and
writing, she lets the content or subject matter of a poem determine its form. Free verse, with its irregular meter
and irregular line and stanza lengths, gives her the freedom of prose combined with the intensity of poetry.
The term “projective verse” could also be applied to her work in this poem. Projective verse regards meter
and form as artificial constraints and seeks to “project” a voice through the content and the pauses for breath
that determine the line. The result in this case is a poem of fragmented prose poetry that expresses, through its
lack of strict form, the quality of a marriage as being both a yearning for and an inability to communicate
fully. Both partners are reaching out but are almost clumsily unable to reach each other.

Since the poem is composed primarily of a series of images linked by abstract concepts, the reader can
perhaps best understand the poem by looking at the images separately. The first group of images includes
thigh, tongue, and teeth—the last one seeming incongruous until it is examined in context. Thigh and tongue
are clearly sensual, suggesting lovemaking by the marital partners. The use of the words “beloved” and
“throbs” also contributes to this sense of physical love. However, the “throbs” goes on to include “in the
teeth.” One clearly sees an added image here—a toothache.

These images are followed by a stanza of abstract statement expressing the couple’s yearning for
commitment. Then the following stanza uses one major image—the leviathan and “we in its belly.” Adding
“belly” to the image clarifies the fact that this is a biblical allusion, referring to the story of Jonah, who was
swallowed by a sea monster, or leviathan (whale). In this image the couple is depicted as having been
swallowed by something they welcome yet cannot escape. They are still searching for some kind of “joy,
some joy not to be known outside of it.”

The final image in the cluster is the ark, again a biblical allusion, suggesting qualities similar to the belly of
the whale: The ark is a safe haven for the couple (“two by two”), yet no escape is in sight. The cluster of
images Levertov uses in this poem work together to form a progression from the personal to the universal. By
incorporating the biblical images, the poet moves the concerns of marriage into the mystical and spiritual
realm. The biblical images also add a quality of timelessness. Myth in literature makes concrete and particular
a perception of human beings or human institutions. In this case, the “ache” of the institution of marriage is
made concrete.

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Bibliography (Critical Guide to Poetry for Students)
Block, Edward, ed. Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 50, no. 1 (Fall, 1997). Special Levertov issue.

Gwynne, R. S., ed. American Poets Since World War II. Vol. 5 in Dictionary of Literary Biography, edited by
Matthew J. Bruccoli. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980.

Hollenberg, Donna. “’History as I Desired It’: Ekphrasis as Postmodern Witness in Denise Levertov’s Late
Poetry.” Modernism/Modernity 10, no. 3 (September, 2003): 519-537.

Janssen, Ronald, ed. Twentieth Century Literature 38, no. 3 (Fall, 1992). Special Levertov issue.

Little, Anne Colclough, and Susie Paul, eds. Denise Levertov: New Perspectives. West Cornwall, Conn.:
Locust Hill Press, 2000.

Long, Mark. “Affinities of Faith and Place in the Poetry of Denise Levertov.” ISLE 6, no. 2 (Summer, 1999):
31-40.

Rodgers, Audrey. Denise Levertov: The Poetry of Engagement. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University
Presses, 1993.

Wagner, Linda W. Denise Levertov. New York: Twayne, 1967.

Wagner, Linda W., ed. Denise Levertov: In Her Own Province. New York: New Directions, 1979.

Wagner-Martin, Linda, ed. Critical Essays on Denise Levertov. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991.

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Source: Critical Guide to Poetry for Students, ©2002 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means
graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information
storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher.

For complete copyright information, please see the online version of this work.