When Denise Levertov died on December 20, 1997, she left behind forty finished poems which form her last collection, This Great Unknowing. Few poets have possessed so great a gift or so great a body of work––upon her death at age 74, she had been a published poet for more than half a century. Although the poems of This Great Unknowing were not organized by Levertov herself, as were the twenty collections she published with New Directions in her lifetime, the poems themselves shine with the artistry of a writer at the height of her powers.