He was a classics tutor at Campion Hall, Oxford from 1965 to 1977, then left the Jesuit order for marriage and a literary life. When asked why, he replied, "It was love."
In an interview with the Paris Review around the time he left the priesthood he was asked about his experience and his view of the sermon as a creative medium. He replied,
------"Oh I think it’s very interesting. Donne’s sermons are wonderful.
------An opportunity not open to most human beings of having a captive
------audience. I think it is much unexploited and I think it has
------thrilling potentialities, but of course only if you happen to
------believe what you’re saying. And it so happens that I did. I mildly
------regret not being able to preach any more sermons."
Peter Levi was Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1984 to 1989. The following excerpts are from his long poem “Ruined Abbeys.”
From Ruined Abbeys
------Monastic limestone skeleton,
------threadbare with simple love of life
------speak out your dead language of stone,
------the wind’s hammer, the sun’s knife,
------the sweet apple of solitude;
------there is a ninth beatitude:
------a child in his simplicity
------is more than a just man can be.
It is not a poem that is easy to analyse, dwelling in the physicality of abandoned stone structures, and in Levi’s experience of how words take on a life of their own.
------Watching all this in an armchair
------consider what these ruins are,
------desolate spirits in the air
------singing in their stone languages
------what religion is not and is,
------not a museum but a stone
------no man can understand alone:
The stanza I would particularly like to highlight is the following — from toward the end of this 417-line poem.
------It ends in death, the old land.
------Darkness climbs into the sky.
------There is nothing left in your hand.
------It gives you no guide to go by.
------Or nothing that a stinging-nettle
------on a bleak stone will not unsettle.
------You who believe my true story
------are not protected from history.
------What can I say about death;
------their death is hidden from my eyes:
------but I believe that the dead rise,
------having been roused by the strong breath
------of my God who is in heaven,
------when the trumpet tears earth open.
To read the entire poem, follow this link.
*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Peter Levi: first post.
Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.
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