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Norman O. Brown: They are girls who are trees and Denise Levertov's "Relearning the Alphabet." There is one other extraordinary poem besides the "Relearning the Alphabet" it's a poem called a "Tree Telling of Orpheus" in the special

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collections at the library here, the blessed Special Collections collected by blessed Rita, there is an app one of the most beautiful books you can ever see. It's a special edition just of this poem, "A Tree Telling of Orpheus", and it's illustrated

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mostly with trees. by Denise Levertov, herself, a tree telling of Orpheus, let's become familiar with Orpheus. Pieria. The two mountains associated with the Muses, one was Mount helicon, down a bit lower and both the OSHA and the other was

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Mount Olympus, and pi... the Pierian slope of Mount Olympus and that is where Orpheus was placed. For part of his life, you know that part of which the poet says Orpheus with his loot, made trees and the mountain tops that freeze leave their place

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and follow Him. Orpheus the divine singer. Levertov writes the poem a tree telling of Orpheus the tree is Denise levertov the tree that followed Orpheus, the divine singer, is Denise Levertov. To join the choir of maidens you maidens

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must become trees, that walk. This poem is so deep and remarkable and eponymous that I'm going to I'm going to dare not to read at all. It's too long. I'm going to try to to give you to direct you to the full poem by by thought of it.

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But the point is the tree that followed Orpheus Unknown: is the poet test the singer Denise Levertov quiet tone stillness when the rippling began, I took it for sea wind coming to our valley with rumors of salt treeless horizons. What

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the white fog didn't stir. The leaves of my brothers remained outstretched unmoving yet the rippling drew nearer. And then, my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if fire had been lit below them too close and their twig tips were drying

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and curling. Yet I was not afraid, only deeply alert. I was the first to see him. For I grew out on the pasture slope beyond the forest. He was a man it seemed. The two moving stems the short trunk, the two arm branches, flexible, each with

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five leafless twigs at their ends and the head that's crowned by brown or gold grass, bearing a face, not like the big face of a bird, more like a flower. He carried a burden made of some cut branch bent while it was green. strands of a vine tight

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stretched across it. From this when he touched it and from his voice, which, unlike the wind's voice had no need of our leaves and branches to complete its sound. came the report. He came still closer, leaned on my trunk the bark thrilled like a leaf

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still folded. Music there was no twig of me not trembling with joy and fear. Then, as he sang, it was no longer sounds only that made the music he spoke. And as no tree listens, I listened. And language came into my roots out of the earth into

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my bark after the air, into the pores of my greenest shoots gently as to and there was no word he sang, but I knew its meaning. Norman O. Brown: Fire he's saying that trees fear and I a

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tree rejoiced in its flames. New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer as though his liar now I knew its name. We're both frost and fire. It's chords flamed up to the crown of me. I was seed again. I was Fern in the swamp, I was cold. And at

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the heart of my word, so close I was to becoming man or a god. There was a kind of silence the kind of sickness something akin to what men called boredom, something the poem descended a scale, a stream over stones, that gives to a candle a

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coldness in the midst of its burning, he said. It was then, when in the blaze of his power that reached me and changed me. I thought I should fall my length that the singer began to leave me. slowly moved from my new shadow to open light. Words

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leaping and dancing over his shoulders back to me rivery sweep of live tones becoming slowly again, ripple and I in terror, but not in doubt of what I must do. in anguish in haste wrenched from the earth root after root, the soil heaving and

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cracking the moss tearing asunder, and behind me, the others my brother's forgotten since dawn, in the forest, they too had heard clumsily stumbling over our own roots, rustling our leaves in answer, we move, we followed. All day we followed up

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hill and down. We learn to dance, for he would stop when the ground was flat. And words, he said, taught us to leap and to wind in and out around one another. In figures, the liars measure designed. The singer laughed till he wept to see us

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he was so glad at sunset, we came to this place I stand in This no with ancient Grove that was bear grass then. In the last light of that day his song became farewell he stilled our longing. He sang our sun dried roots back into Earth. watered

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them. All Night Rain of music so quiet. We could almost not hear it in the moonless dark. by dawn he was gone. We have stood here since in our new life. We have waited. He does not return. It is said that he

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made his Earth journey and lost what he thought. It is said they failed him and cut up his limbs for firewood. And it is said his head still sang and was swept out to sea singing. Perhaps he will not return. But what we have lived comes back to us. We

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see more. We feel as our wings increase, something that lifts our branches that stretches our further lift tips further. The wind, the birds do not sound poorer, but clearer. Recalling our agony and the way we danced the music