To read the profuse writings of Denise Levertov is certainly to read within a Williams tradition; Levertov's critics and the poet herself have amply documented the influential presence Williams maintains in Levertov's lyrical affirmation of the ordinary, her adoption of an American idiom, and her understanding of form. Williams's enthusiasm for Levertov's work, as the opening quote suggests, grows in part from a recognition of a poetic heir who, in carrying on his own project, mirrors and affirms for the older poet his struggle to develop a distinctly American poetry. However, in an interesting moment of validation, Williams turns to Flossie for the authority to comment upon “America's woman poet,” distinguishing both his wife and his literary daughter from a mainstream, male American poetry. This moment is loaded with an unresolved ambiguity, for on the one hand it can be seen as a subtle slighting of “women's poetry.”