Breathing the Water

Levertov's new work presents poems that are beautifully crafted, deeply felt, and carefully thought out. She arrays them in seven sections, one each of poems on poetic inspiration, responses to photos by Peter McAfee Brown, elegies, intimations of mortality and catastrophe, responses to reading, appreciations of nature, and Christian devotions. Specifically religious utterances in the last section pierce the mysteries of the incarnation, especially in the lucid and enlightening series, "The Showings: Lady Julian of Norwich, 1342-1416", Levertov's sublime exegies of the insights of the medieval mystic. ISBN 0-8112-1026-X : $16.95.