In the Land of Shinar (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

While “In the Land of Shinar” has received little individual attention amidst the criticism of Levertov’s later work, it nevertheless represents what Janet Tassel deemed the “confluence of her politics and her muse.” The comment demonstrates that both Levertov and her critics have traveled quite a distance since the year (1972) that saw the publication of To Stay Alive, a volume the poet offered as “a document of some historical value, a record of one person’s inner / outer experience in America during the ‘60’s and the beginning of the ‘70’s.” That book simply wasn’t poetry, claimed critic Marie Boroff: “Poetic forms are repeatedly laid aside, as if felt inadequate for the rendering of actual life.” Charles Altieri was also disappointed that Levertov seemed unable to “adapt her poetic to pressing social concerns caused by the war in Vietnam.” Despite the negative criticism, however, Levertov continued writing and refining her “political” poetry, explaining to an interviewer in 1983:

Look. An artist is only an artist when he or she lives and works in the world, not in a ‘whited sepulchre.’ If artists, with their finely tuned receptors and their gift of reaching people, don’t act on their deepest moral commandments, who on Earth should? They won’t write bad poetry unless they’re bad poets; good poets don’t use poetry, poetry uses them.

As Levertov’s corpus and her reputation grew, her political and moral convictions continued in “confluence” with her spirituality; this is especially apparent in Candles in Babylon (1981) and subsequent volumes. Critics Joan Hallisey, Linda Wagner-Martin, and Joyce Lorraine Beck all recognize that the complex weave of Levertov’s Hasidic and Christian heritage has enriched her poetry from the beginning, incorporating, says Beck, an “abiding unwillingness to separate religious issues from human ones.” In her later work, Levertov’s more explicit Christian images represent not a narrowing of concern, but evidence, for Denise Lynch, of how “Levertov channels her political commitment and ‘rebellious caritas’ into conventional gestures of faith, and infuses the joy of spiritual community into the isolate poetic act.” As a result, Lynch continues, “even the terror of a nuclear age yields to the numinous moment.”

In his essay on the garden motif in Levertov’s work, Edward Zlotkowski finds evidence for the growing interaction between her “journey of art and the journey of faith.” Poems throughout Levertov’s canon suggest to Zlotkowski that “to be in the garden, to return to the garden, is to claim one’s original birthright of joy, creativity, and proximity to the divine.” But the vision of Eden and paradise is also subject to loss. “In the Land of Shinar” reveals what happens when humankind becomes separated from the divine and expelled, as it were, from Eden. In what Zlotkowski calls Levertov’s “imaginative integrity,” the prophesied fall of the tower is distinct neither from the mythic Fall, nor from the very present consequences of morally misguided technological, military, or industrial projects.