Denise Levertov considers poetry and politics as "organically and necessarily connected". She sees her role as a poet and a member of society as an almost didactic one, certainly with a strong sense of 'social responsibility' and 'moral conscience'. The role manifests itself in her poems through her key ideas of spiritual, political and social awareness, and above all, the necessity for exploration and personal discovery.

Perhaps the poem which embodies Levertov's philosophy on life and politics most effectively is 'O Taste and See'. In it she invites readers to acknowledge the importance of engagement in the world, providing a challenge to William Wordsworth's, "The World is too much with us", citing her belief that, "the world is not with us enough". Inquisitiveness and involvement, in her view, are crucial not only for personal life but also political life. By viewing and absorbing the world individuals leave their mark on society and transform it forever; "breathe them, bite, savour, chew, swallow, transform". Their involvement benefits their own knowledge and experience. Levertov's 'moral conscience' is evident in this poem; she wishes and beckons people to be aware of this fact and she is fulfilling her role as a writer by doing so.

Her dedicated belief in engagement naturally leads on to the view that senses, especially touch, must be experienced intensely and intimately. Intensity of attention and acute awareness is a closely related facet of her 'social responsibility' she believes everyone requires in order to live a meaningful life and to have a functioning, purposeful society. Without this 'lust for life', Levertov warns in "What Wild Dawns There Were", people are led to inaction, apathy and disconnection. "I watch the dawn through glass", she says after losing the former excitement and intimacy in her relationship with her husband. They no longer explore together. 'Glass' is a dangerous image for Levertov: she dislikes the idea of unable to totally connect on a sensual level with the environment. In the poem the past is remembered as a wonderful, joyous time, serene and without inhibition, while the present is uninteresting and lifeless. This could suggest she is exploring the nature of human memory: that often when the present is unhappy the past is remembered as the opposite. The importance of living and interacting in the present is another of her 'cardinal' beliefs.

The ideal poem to demonstrate Levertov's liking for spontaneity and 'non-linearity' is 'Overland to the Islands'. According to Levertov, as well as being engaged and intent one needs to 'live in the now' and experience the world in a spontaneous and non-linear fashion. She compares this idea to a dog wandering around sniffing and exploring with no particular destination in mind, simply the joy of discovery. "Every step an arrival", demonstrates her point perfectly: there is no time but the present. "There's nothing the dog disdains on his way": suggesting we cannot be prejudiced against things we encounter in the environment, neither can we let anything pass our gaze, otherwise the world is not entirely known to us, and we may miss out on critical information. The dog changes pace and approach, it does not have one way of going about things, it simply enjoys the world. Planning causes a loss of intensity, while spontaneity encourages it. She sums it up in the beginning of the poem with, "Let's go". She seeks with her poetry essential, distinctive and revelatory qualities of everything, and encourages readers to do the same: to be like the dog. This same attitude is carried through into her political life.

Awareness and clear vision of issues, language, life and politics is to Levertov ultimately significant. Questioning and challenging the status quo goes hand and hand with this view. All of Levertov's ideas are inexorably connected; they either require or are beneficial to one another. In Tenebrae she mournfully writes, "they are not listening, not listening". The citizens of Middle America are aware of the war, but they close their eyes and ears and hope it will go away. They continue with their daily lives, which seem pomp and ostentatious compared with the horrors occurring at the same time in Vietnam. Levertov desperately wants people to take notice, and to take action. It is her perceived role as a poet to urge people to use their conscience, but she too is not unaffected, even as a poet she is not untouchable. She admits in, 'Advent 1966', that "my poet's sight I was given… is blurred". The war has hindered the very thing she needs at this time, her vision and her language. She says, "a cataract has filmed over my inner eyes". The savagery and horror of the war has restricted her ability to see clearly, perhaps her anger towards it is blinding her. During war Levertov says herself, "Nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living in peace would have". However, her conscience is intact and, cloudy as her vision may be, she feels it is still her responsibility to maintain people's awareness through her poetry.

'Modes of Being' contrasts the war more directly with her own life in America. It begins with her as ignorant and self-aware as the parents and children in Tenebrae, interlarded with short and precise excerpts of Vietnamese prisoner's sufferings. The excerpts act to make the reader aware of the extravagance of, "a new landscape of knowledge", while something as horrific as the Vietnamese war is going on. The message goes further than Tenebrae, however. Levertov introduces the idea of polarities unable to be truly known while the war is going on, "Joy is real, torture is real, we strain to hold a bridge between them open, and fail, or all but fail". She cannot maintain a connection with the intense pain of the prisoners and thus cannot truly maintain a connection with the 'higher knowledge' she is acquiring at home. War also threatens her profound desire for the balance and merging of opposite intensities.

Possibly the most pivotal point Levertov makes in her poetry is that balance is required; there is an inherent order to the world which must be kept stable. This is mostly a naturalistic and spiritual belief because she certainly believes society can be revolutionised, but underpinning it all, the world tends to order. It also refers more directly to the balance of positive and negative. In her poem 'Entr'acte' she is involved in a protest against the Vietnam War and recalls, "wanting with all my hunger this anguish, this knowing in the body the grim odds we're up against, wanting it real". She wants to know intensity of pain as well as intensity of joy. In 'O Taste and See' she wants people to absorb the world, which includes all the bad, all the pain and suffering. Without this knowledge, this balance of polarities, no-one can truly be aware because they have not experienced both sides of the coin. "The bitter taste", she refers to is death. Life and death for Levertov are one in the same.

Balance does not only apply to life and death, but to all things. In an interview she explains her belief in these terms: "Strength of feeling, reverence for mystery and clarity of intellect must be kept in balance with one another". She continues to reiterate this point throughout her poetry. Morally and politically action is only an extension of the desire for balance. She wishes to inform society of this so that anyone can make a difference and 'transform the world'.