Oblique Prayers is arranged in four thematic sections that, taken together, work toward a mature philosophy in equal harmony with public activism and private reflection. A personal mood links the poems of Decipherings. In Prisoners, the poet addresses the continuing horrors of our dark time: genocide, imperialism, impending nuclear holocaust–human degradation in brutal political guise. Levertov is an accomplished translator. With Fourteen Poems by Jean Joubert, she introduces English-speaking readers to a contemporary French poet whose work is remarkably akin to her own. Of God and of the Gods, the final section of the book, is informed by a transcendent lyricism that can equate in a breath a day of spring, a needle’s eye.